The Most Disastrous Year Imaginable and It Might Get Worse

I wasn't around for the great depression, or WWII so the ever shrinking, "Greatest Generation," will have to forgive me if I consider 2020 the worst year in the last century, or so. There were other bad ones in my life time. 1968 comes to mind, but even with assassinations, race riots, and the conflagration in Southeast Asia, we didn't seem to be teetering on the edge like we are now.

Maybe it's the COVID that has pushed us to the edge of the abyss. The plague has played out like some dreadful slow motion Irwin Allen disaster movie. It has eaten away at our morale, patience, and sanity. In the face of it we have, or at least should have learned some degree of humility, not to mention awe at the mindless, yet sometimes ravenous whims of nature.

In H.G. Wells novel, "War of the Worlds," the Martians were undone by the unseen microbes found on this planet. This year has made it easy to understand how they felt when their triumphant armies began to collapse for no discernable reason. Yet many among us continue to ignore the growing body count.

Of course it doesn't help that in this suddenly shaky republic we have exactly the wrong man in the White House to address, both the virus and the racial crisis which has gripped us.

Let's face it, Donald J. Trump, who at best is a carnival midway barker turned cult leader, doesn't have a clue when it comes to controlling a pandemic. To complicate matters he has, some would say with malice of forethought, done nothing, but exacerbate the anger so many thousands have expressed in the streets.

In fact, looking back at the last seven plus months, it is painfully obvious our man in the White House hasn't made a single correct decision since the shit hit the fan. Not one.

Indeed, many promises about the disease have been made, but none have been fulfilled. Then his administration, so corrupt, it makes Dick Nixon's look like a bunch of cheap men's room graffiti vandals, went out and intentionally increased the level of civil violence for apparent political reasons.

And there is the problem. Donald Trump doesn't consider any natural disaster, or civil crisis in terms other Presidents would. For all his braggadocio about not being a professional politician he views every single thing thing as a political issue. All humanity and sense of national good are removed from the issues and replaced with the cold blooded thought, how can this benefit me.

No other Chief Executive in the history of the United States could survive a year like Donald Trump has had in the Oval Office. However that doesn't mean we will be rid of him in November. His cult--and it is a cult--numbers in the millions and ranges from outer limits conspiracy theorists to the most vile racists imaginable.

His disregard for any and all laws and regulations is well known. By now every man, woman, and child, knows he not only has a taste for cheating, but hell, he likes it. To him it is just another part of politics and life to be used like salt on an order of fries.

Trump and his party, now culled of doubters and principled conservatives, are working as busy as rabid beavers to make voting not only more difficult for minorities and the other usual suspects, but down right life threatening.

His shrill protests about voting by mail, which he routinely does himself, are laying the groundwork for future judicial challenges to the election outcome if he should lose. Then there are his old friends the Russians who have thoroughly infiltrated the nation's social networks and possibly some voting machines.

Normally I would say Donald Trump is done, a dead duck, but given what has happened and what might we can't be too sure.

Yes, 2020 has so far been the most disastrous year imaginable, but that doesn't mean it won't get worse.


8-4-20