New Year, Old Problems

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor I hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas. As I write this, we’re in that weird week between Christmas and New Year’s that’s sort of like still the holidays but not really. By the time you read this, we’ll be just a couple of days away from bidding farewell to 2020 (the 30th is actually my parents’ 48th wedding anniversary, so congrats to them).

By almost any measure, 2020 has been a bust. We went into it with such enthusiasm, and by March, the writing was on the wall that we were not going to get the year we were expecting. But time, as it always does, marches on and now 2021 is just a couple of days away.

So, what does that get us?

Despite the mindset that this will all be over when the calendar flips over to January, this will not all be over. The date will change, sure, but we haven’t really turned any corners on the major issues that 2020 brought us.

COVID-19 hasn’t gone away. The phrase “when this is all over” actually meant something back in April or May. We were confident that the summer months would bring relief. Then, there was hope of a vaccine in the fall. That came and went, and now the vaccine(s) are here. Well, there here for some folks, but not for all. We’re still a few months away from that, so maybe “when this is all over” will be a real thing next year.

We didn’t really fix all the racial tensions either, did we? What did we do exactly? We took down some statues, changed the names of some buildings, started spelling “black” with a capital B… oh, and we got rid of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Problem solved, right?

No, there’s still a great undercurrent of animosity. There’s still cries of racial injustice and movements to “defund the police” in communities that desperately need the police. There was a lot of talk and protest and counter-protest but we didn’t really see any significant progress. We really just sort of stopped talking about it.

And, of course there’s politics… I almost hate even bringing it up. First off, there are millions of educated, rational people out there who honestly believe there was a successful, nationwide conspiracy to steal the presidential election from Donald Trump. There wasn’t. There just wasn’t.

Honestly, he would have been easily re-elected if he had even, just for a minute, put anything or anyone ahead of himself. He didn’t. He lost.

So instead of spending the past couple of months on pandemic relief, lawmakers have instead played party politics and pointed fingers while millions suffered and thousands died. Even as the coronavirus continues to spread, politicians (on both sides) are bickering over numbers and pushing their own agendas. Even after recounts and judicial decrees and certifications and re-certifications, there are those paralyzed by a president who refuses to concede and one who truly hopes that his cronies will attempt to overthrow the government on January 6th and keep him as president despite the 80 million votes the other guy got in November.

And speaking of the other guy … what, really, is Joe Biden going to bring to the table? What is his master plan to turn things around: the pandemic, the economy, the partisan deadlock, the social inequality? These are all things that are still going to be here on January 20th, 2021, when he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are sworn in. Out of office, Trump is still going to loom over the scene, spreading his brand of information to anyone who will listen. I wish the new president well, but there’s only so much that can be done and there isn’t any indication that there’s going to be a spirit of cooperation on Capitol Hill next year or for the next four years.

I don’t mean to be all doom-and-gloom here, but I am trying to be a realist. “And this too shall pass,” the Bible tells us. And it will. It’s the bleak mid-winter now, and I know that means hard times are ahead. We’re, even now, still dealing with tragedy. The circle of coronavirus is tightening all around us. We’ve reached the point where virtually everyone, including me, has had a family member get sick or a friend pass away from COVID-19. Many people we know are out of work. And the benefits that have been helping to keep them afloat are drying up.

There is a new year on the horizon, and despite all the negative things still going on, we should embrace the spirit of hope that comes with the new year. We’ve come through so much and we’ll get through this, too.

Let’s all do our part to put the “happy” in Happy New Year!