Enough, already, from us “nattering nabobs of negativity,” as we were branded by a distinguished vice president of the United States shortly before he resigned his office to avoid prison (Agnew). If you can’t say something good about a year, you may be right, but jeez, we have to at least try. It’s the season and all. So let’s review some of the good things that happened in 2020.
There was, in this country and many others, a significant reduction in pollution in 2020, including in the emissions of greenhouse gasses. The air in many of the world’s most polluted cities became noticeably clearer and measurably more healthy. The change was sufficient to suggest a slight brake on the progress of global climate change, the first such in modern history.
Alas, it was not a stalwart populace rising at last to face a difficult enemy, it was a reluctant populace trying to face down a different enemy, the coronavirus pandemic. Restrictions on gatherings, dining out, bar hopping, travel and business in general reduced industrial activity enough to improve the environment. Whenever and wherever the restrictions were eased the activity resumed and the environment went back in the tank.
It was a great year for technology; all the technology companies say so. Announcements of great strides flew like snow flurries in Minneapolis, many of them about driverless car projects about to be launched. Uber, for example, has spent $2.5 billion dollars over five years on press releases about driverless car projects that are about to succeed. What they have actually developed, however, is a car that by law must have a driver (also the case for every other car called “driverless”) and can proceed down the road an average of one-half mile before doing something so stupid the human driver has to intervene.
In September the manager of Uber’s self-driving-car unit threw up his hands in defeat in an email to the CEO that became public. In December the CEO unloaded the unit on a company convinced it can still delude investors and lenders enough to keep the con going for a while. Uber said it would return its attention to profits, something the company has never made in its entire existence. It has lost about a billion dollars every year.
Which brings to mind the wonders of the 2020 stock market. While the people of America sickened and died in a pandemic that may be the worst in our history, while the economy tanked in a manner reminiscent of the Great Depression, while millions fell into poverty, faced eviction, lost their jobs, had to close their businesses, and experienced “food insecurity” — that’s a euphemism for starvation — the stock market soared to unprecedented heights. We don’t know what they’re smoking in the Great Casino, but here’s just one example of its effects: in 2020, they welcomed Tesla into the Standard and Poor 500, the principal index for how the market is doing. They valued Tesla, which makes maybe one percent of the world’s cars, at $615 billion, more than the value of the seven top world automakers combined. As the country song says, all that glitters is not gold.
The smartphone industry certainly sounded like it was having a good year. It seemed that dozens of new phone models were released, one having three, count em three, cameras, another with a big folding screen that after a week or two of use tends to go “crunch” when folded, and a bunch of them labeled 5G, for Fifth Generation phone network, designed to replace all our outdated 4G phones with ones that go faster, faster. Why do we need phones that go faster, faster? That is not at all clear to me. Two companies, Verizon and T-Mobile, announced that they had rolled out national 5G networks.
Turns out that all the new phone models were increasingly desperate attempts to get us to trade in our year-old phones to get the expensive new features. But it also turns out that most of us are perfectly satisfied with the phones we have and are happy to hang on to them for four or five years, which is not what the phone companies’ marketing plans require. Oh, and it also turns out that those companies that claimed to have rolled out 5G networks? They flat lied. I could explain it, but it would give us both headaches.
Okay so I tried, but I can’t get any more lipstick on this pig. Face it, 2020 sucked all the way down to the ground, and we must never speak of it again.
Don’t forget, the world’s richest country saw millions more added to it’s already worst-in-the-OECD poverty rolls.
The worlds oldest Constitutional Republic can’t seem to carry out an election without half the country losing it’s s*** afterwards, as “The Russians are Coming!” has morphed smoothly into “The Chinese are Coming!”
And we still slogging through a poorly-managed pandemic without a national healthcare system… ‘but, but, but that would be extremist!’ says the only OECD country without one. Who’s the “extremist,” exactly?
And these are all choices we’ve made, collectively if not individually: poverty, homelessness, epidemics of drug abuse, suicide, obesity, anxiety, and an unnecessarily precarious existence for all but the well-heeled.
https://forcethevote.org/
Happy New Year.
The graphic you chose for the header was perfection.
Not all the way down, you were here with/for us. Thank you.
Thank god my flip phone still makes me feel like a crew member of the Starship Enterprise circa Captin James T Kirk Happy New Year to all of you and thanks for continuing this blog that quite often has been a life raft in a sea of idiocy!
Thanks for your essay! What a year. I was a minor county public employee in a town with a dam five miles upriver. The dam was leaking badly. And a dam break would have wiped out the town. The corp of engineers, eventually rebuilt it. But before it was rebuilt the County Commissioners decided to have a practice evacuation one Saturday. So I spoke to one of them about it. I noted that there was nothing in the paper, no listing of the evacuation route, nothing, nothing at all. I asked the Commissioner why this was, and he told me that he would not want to panic the public or worry them. I countered with yes, but wouldn’t a practice evacuation help in the event that a real one were called for, it need not be mandatory, and that certainly a public that knew where to go and what to do in a hurry might be a good idea. My thoughts were unwelcome. I later learned what the practice evacuation consisted of, to-wit: all the prisoners in the County Jail were moved to high ground. I guess if a real disaster strikes the rest of us could just drown.
Oh, don’t worry. 2021 will be even better!
Don’t you love it how we live in such wonderful times? :D