How should we describe the year of our Lord 2019? Catastrophic seems a tad too negative, although on the other hand the word, draining appears far too cheery. Perhaps dreadful is the term we're looking for. Let's see.
January: Almost immediately after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sworn in as a Congresswoman from New York the ultra right wing loons attacked. A video of Boston University students dancing on roof tops showed up on YouTube. According to the poster of the video, Q Anonymous 1776, it was a high school shoot, featuring, "Americas favorite commie know it all acting like the nit wit she is." The main focus of outrage, however wasn't a college aged Ocasio-Cortez dancing up a storm with some pals--the video was designed to welcome new BU students to the school and was played during their orientation sessions--but the shocking fact she was going by a different name in the credits. The video proclaimed the Congresswoman was, "busted," for going by a, "completely different name." The name she used in the video was, Sandy Ocasio-Cortez, a childhood moniker she had grown up with.
February: The Oklahoma state Senate pro tem pushed a bill through his committee which would outlaw abortions in OK days after the U. S. Supreme Court's assumed repeal of Roe v. Wade. Among those standing in opposition was republican senator Joe Silk. He had written his own bill which would not only outlaw abortion immediately, but had a provision charging any one performing the procedure with homicide. Silk, apparently unaware of the Constitution of the United States, was quoted as saying, "Oklahoma doesn't need the court's permission to outlaw the killing of innocent children."
March: People running the massive annual right wing pep rally known as CPAC decided "journalist," Laura Loomer was even too crazy for them. As she was being carted away from the hall Loomer was heard yelling, "Don Jr. follows me on Instagram. I'm one of Trump's biggest supporters. I had 265,000 followers on Twitter before I was banned."
April: As soon as U.S. Attorney General, William Barr released a highly redacted version of Robert Mueller's report, Donald Trump threw himself a party in Grand Rapids Michigan. It would mark the first time a large section of the crowd showed up wearing and carrying "Q" tee shirts and signs. He drove them into a frenzy when he proclaimed, "the deep state," plot against him had been foiled, at least for now.
May: Ultra right wing troll, Jacob Wohl proclaimed, "Truth is an obsolete concept. It's something that can't be thought about in linear, binary true-false, facts-non facts--you can't do that any more. It's just not the way it works. The veracity of the information I spread isn't important. All that matters is how far those claims travel and how many people believe them."
June: In Oregon republican state senators vehemently opposed a pro environment bill passed earlier by the state house. Since they didn't have the votes to defeat it they walked out en masse in order to deny the chamber a quorum. When the governor threatened to send state troopers to drag them back at least one Oregon senator made a veiled threat on her life and a not so subtle one to shoot the troopers assigned to detain him. Later a large demonstration of armed, "militias," in Salem prevented both state houses from being convened.
July: In the aftermath of Jefferey Epstein's suicide attempt--which happened right in the middle of Bob Mueller's congressional testimony--Alex Jones of Info Wars fame, went on record as saying the Achilles heel of, The Deep State, is its members insatiable need to commit acts of pedophilia.
August: Jefferey Epstein's second attempt to kill himself was more successful. As soon as he was found dead right wing rubes went all over social media blaming just about everyone on the left including the Clintons, Barack H. Obama, and the British Royal Family. In a nod to conspiracies everywhere left wing posters blamed, Donald Trump and his personal A.G, Bill Barr.
September: Early in the month ABC's Johnathan Karl aired a brief report about a Trump tweet during which he said the President had misstated Hurricane Dorian's path. Karl added the information in the tweet had been corrected by the National Weather Service. Trump, being Trump fired off another tweet vilifying fake news' Jonathan Carl, misspelling the reporter's name. Kentucky minister, Reverend Johnathan Carl's Twitter account was quickly inundated with obscene and threatening messages sent by the President's followers. What followed might have been the most bizarre series of events in the past two plus years of the current administration. Trump held a presser which included a map of Dorian's predicted path, hand edited with a Sharpie. Later it was revealed his Secretary of Commerce was directed to fire NWS personnel unless they issued a statement saying Trump was correct. They did even though their people ended up being right. To this day, Don Trump has never admitted he was wrong about Dorian's path, or apologized to the pastor.
October: Congressman Matt Gaetz and a couple of dozen of his GOP pals invaded what is called the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility in the basement of the Capitol Building. They did so to protest what they described as, "Soviet style," secret meetings during which Donald Trump was being investigated in a political vacuum cut off from all republican input and witness examinations. Mr. Gaetz failed to mention, or was too stupid to realize, that of the 103 members of congress on three different committees investigating Trump in the SCIF, 47 were republicans with full access to evidence and witnesses.
November: The official congressional inquiry into the impeachment of Don Trump began.
December: Donald John Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, was impeached.
Yes, dreadful does seem to be the best descriptor for 2019, even though weird and insane also fit. Back in the late 1960's and early 70's it was my opinion the only time the nation had been more divided was during the Civil War. In 2019 that unenviable bar has been surpassed. Even back in those days of riots, civil protests, and anti war sentiment we could actually agree on what was true and what wasn't. Now, as the second decade of the 21st century begins, we not only can't agree on basic truths, many of us, like Jacob Wolh and Don Trump are convinced such concepts should be tossed into a dumpster like so much garbage.
sic vita est
12-31-19
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