Five hours and forty minutes. Could any year be worse than this one? Historians rate it down to about eighth in US history, giving 1862 with the thousands that died in the Civil War a reason to lay claim, bringing the USA close to an end, 1968 with the political upheaval, the Vietnam war, and the assassinations, 2001, and the fall of the twin towers, and who could forget 1929 with the stock market crash, bread lines and the depression?
But 2020 is a worthy competitor. The pandemic, social unrest, election chaos, the rise of right-wing militant groups, and the mere presence of Donald J Trump alive and in office, gives reason to consider it. In fact, the four years that Trump has been president, if taken together, represent a sad time in American history, coalescing in one horrendous four-year year.
2020 began with very little fanfare, a year like any other year, that is, unless you consider that Trump was apprised of the danger of Covid-19 in that first month. Even though he knew how deadly it was, he said, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” Instead of acting on the knowledge that he had been given, he called it a hoax perpetuated by Democrats who want to bring him down. That “one person” has metastasized into twenty million cases and three hundred and forty-four thousand unnecessary deaths. Not a year later, but in only ten months. One of a huge number of failures for the sociopath, the moron who for the next nineteen days, calls 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue “home.”
In February Trump was impeached by the house, but acquitted by the Senate. The Republican party, once a collection of conservative voices who loved America, became cultists, pledging allegiance and fealty to an autocratic man-child, the wannabe dictator who ruled them with criticism and threats.
By March stay-at-home orders were in place. The country shut down. In June Trump staged his infamous plea to evangelicals, clearing peaceful protestors from a church in Washington DC, then holding a Bible upside-down to show his religious convictions. It became a meme to hold a book that you’ve never read in front of a place you’ve never been.
In the summer twelve named storms hit the southern US. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the “notorious RBG” passed away, leaving Trump and the Republicans an opportunity to select a conservative inexperienced justice to take the place of the liberal icon, that sadly, stayed too long.
In October Trump got Covid. We prayed that he would find himself on a ventilator, but a zillion doctors, the best medical care in America, experimental drugs conspired to save the tyrant, who upon his release, returned to the White House, and in a theatrical display, threw off his mask, encouraging seventy million sheep (what a lot of cotton!) to do the same. They did, then they died.
The vaccine arrived in December, but the country, so ill-prepared for testing, for caring for the afflicted, for knowing what to do next, is now ill-prepared to administer the vaccine. It sits in warehouses, and nmore people die.