Lumen 21-2, 2.0

Highlights of 2020

 

Posted – July 30, 2021

 

Irrelevant tid bit – You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need.

            The Rolling Stones    "You Can't Always get What you Want"

 (This was written on December 5, 2020, but still seems to fit.)

 

At the end if each year it is customary to look back and examine the most important events of that year. While 2020 is not over yet, and based on what has happened so far, we certainly could have additional major events, nevertheless, I present, for your consideration, my list of the major events so far in this remarkable year.

 

1 and 2. – Covid 19/Economic Crises – These two items could be considered separate, but I look at them as cause (Covid 19) and effect (economic crises).  The Covid 19 pandemic has caused and is causing so much obvious worldwide illness and death that it is not
necessary to quantify the damage here.  One widely applied technique to fight this pandemic is to drastically reduce human-to-human contacts, and “closing” the economy is an effective tool to reach that goal, but unfortunately those closings have severely damaged economies across the globe.

While I consider these two items as one, they are of such magnitude that they warrant both the number 1 and 2 ranks.  Despite this very high ranking, these events are relatively short term, assuming that we develop effective vaccines and treatments for Covid and the world economy is able to recover in future years, although it may take a few years.

 

3. Climate Change

– With the overwhelming noise of Covid and other events, climate change received relatively little attention in 2020, but we have two demonstrations of its importance in the U.S. – hurricanes and western wildfires.  We have record wildfires in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and Australia and a record number of hurricanes striking the U.S.  Very different events, but both reflections of climate change, which will certainly continue to change our planet long after Covid 19 has disappeared from view.

 

4. Race

– Race has always been and remains an overwhelming issue in the U.S. and in many other countries.  When living in Mississippi for eight years I observed that every issue quickly involved the question of racial equality.  At the time I thought that this was a function of the history of massive racial injustice in Mississippi, but this year national racial issues have achieved a much higher level of recognition, and I now see that “racial questions permeating every issue” is not limited to Mississippi.  Race problems permeate everything in the entire U.S., a painful thing to admit.  We will be a great country only when we live up to our own standard of “All men are created equal”.

 

5. Presidential Election and Foreign Interference – President Donald Trump - no need to say anything else about the election.  Foreign interference with our election is a serious threat to our democracy and since we have not yet figured out how to stop it, it will likely get worse before it gets better.

 

6. National Division – The citizens of the U.S. are badly split on almost all political issues.  We look at the world in strongly held, different ways, and this division appears to be getting worse. Our progress in anything will always be handicapped until we can agree on our direction.  We all have to recognize that the other side is not going to go away, no matter how strongly we believe they are wrong.