Thursday, December 31, 2020
2020 hindsight
As this very unusual year draws to an end, I thought it would be a good idea to look back at the last 12 months and see what, if anything, we have learned.
The sad truth is I don’t think we’ve learned a thing.
I still hear people who think that the Coronavirus is no worse than the seasonal flu despite the fact that as of this writing, 334,029 people in the United States have died of it since Jan 21, 2020. In contrast, only 22,000 people died of the normal flu in 2019-2020 flu season. .
Yet despite all the evidence around them -- like over-flowing hospitals and a healthcare system on the brink of collapse -- I still see people asserting their “rights” not to wear masks or protesting government restrictions limiting large gatherings. To make matters worse, unscrupulous politicians are using this crisis not bring the country together, but to separate us into small tribes as if this were some sort of game.
This has left me feeling frustrated on a number of levels and makes me feel like the year 2020 is going to be the year that began the decline and fall of one of the greatest countries on Earth.
The United States was built on all of us being one, unified people. It’s right there in the pledge of allegiance we all recited as children: “one nation under G-d, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Yet politicians seem bound and determined to divide us into small groups: red and blue, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, snowflake or fascist.
For G-d’s sake, didn’t we fight a war over this 150 years ago? Does no one remember that famous Lincoln quote: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."?
The United States didn’t expand across an entire continent, help turn the tide in the world’s first mechanized war, survive a great depression, defeat fascist regimes bent on world domination and win a cold war, by turning against each other and fighting among ourselves.
On the contrary, we put on our big-boy pants, put aside our differences, and came together to fight whatever the current threat was. But today there seems no interest in this. All people seem to be interested in today is their own good. Screw the other guy, as long as they get what’s good for them, they don’t care what happens to anyone else.
This has never become more clear to me than the people who still refuse to mask up. “It violates MY rights,” they say. “I shouldn’t be forced to wear a mask.”
And they are right. They do have a right NOT to wear that mask. But to paraphrase the late, great StanLee, “With our great First Amendment rights, comes great responsibility” and while some people are all about defending those rights, they forget about their responsibilities to their fellow citizens that comes with them.
Look, our rights do NOT let us do anything we want. The U.S. Constitution guarantees us to the right of free speech, but you can be damn sure that if I yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater (remember them?) that you’d be arrested for causing a stampede if not a few deaths.
Likewise, there is no law that says you have to wear any clothing if you don’t want to. But you still can’t go out in public naked, even if you find clothing gives you a rash or prevents your skin from breathing. You’d be arrested for public indecency. And what about my right to go around shirtless with nothing on my feet? I should be able to walk into any restaurant and get something to eat, right? So where is all the outrage over those “No shirts, no shoes, no service signs” I see posted on almost every eatery’s door?
Then, on top of all this disregard for our fellow citizens, we’ve suddenly turned our collective backs on another thing that allowed this country to excel: our reverence for science and the opinion of experts.
Our history is chockful full scientists, doctors and engineers whose inventions and discoveries helped change the world: Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney, George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison, George Eastman, Walter Reed, Philo Farnsworth, Robert Goddard, Benjamin Spock, Jonas Salk. Then there are others like Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla who came to this country and became citizens because of the value our country placed on science.
But I’m afraid that wouldn’t happen today. If Einstein and Tesla were thinking of about coming to our country now, they’d probably be turned off by self-proclaimed, armchair experts who think that because they saw something on Facebook or spent 10 minutes Googling something, that they suddenly know more about science and engineering than they do.
It’s sad because I always thought that we were better than this. I always believed each new year would bring us one step closer to the shiny utopian future portrayed in “Star Trek” and not toward the bleakness of the Empire’s rule in the “Star Wars” universe.
But if 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that maybe it’s time to retire those rose-colored glasses and optimistic attitude I’ve always viewed the future with and start looking at it with a more skeptical eye.
I hope 2021 will change this attitude, but at the moment, I’m not counting on it.
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