Goodbye to 2021

The past year began with more hope to finally turn the page, only to find that the next few pages were glued together. COVID’s vaccines had been created and hope that we could put this pandemic more behind us were building. And, the last president of the United States was going to leave after one term taking his untruthful, bullying, incompetent and ego-maniacal bent with him.

Sadly, we learned that no good deed goes unpunished, and politicians made political a pandemic and its vaccines, masks, and other tools to fight it. In some places, public officials who were trying to help people got vilified by hyper-political attacks fueled by governors from Texas and Florida, and the former president. Ironically, only last week when the former president tried to do the right thing and advocated the booster shot, he got booed by his own fans. He realized then he helped create a monster that was bigger than himself.

We also learned that same man was far more than what is noted above. We learned he played a heavy hand in seditious activities to overthrow a branch of government. This handiwork may be proven to be far worse than what is overtly known, but we cannot and must not let what happened on January 6 happen again. Full Stop.

And, we learned he can be sociopathic. Narcissism is a form of sociopathism, but it came to a point when the former president confirmed this year what he told two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward in an interview on February 7, 2020 that he knew of the dangers of COVID then. What makes this unnerving is he had several pep rallies later in the month of February with his most loyal followers without telling them they were in danger. At those rallies, he told them COVID was Democrat hoax and naysayed it.

We also learned that Joe Biden can make mistakes just like his predecessors. Getting out of Afghanistan so abruptly without forewarning allies caused a rapid domino effect. We had little reconnaissance that people in the military would simply step aside so easily to let the Taliban assume control. Yet, we should have known and handled this better. One of the sad truths about American leadership is sometimes we let our own arrogance get in the way of learning the facts. We went into Iran and Afghanistan thinking we knew more than we did and it caused us problems.

I will say Biden, while imperfect, is a breath of fresh air from his predecessor. I grew very tired of the lens always being on the former president. I actually do not want to hear from the president every day. Let the people you hired do their jobs. I am also glad we finally got an infrastructure bill passed after ten years of inaction. America must invest in ourselves as we have fallen into a state of disrepair.

On the global front, we are learning that Brexit is briar patch that is hard to navigate without getting thorns. And, while it is appropriate that Boris Johnson be the one getting the thorns given his marketing stance on Brexit early on, it is painfully obvious the UK needs someone who knows details and diplomacy to handle the unwind. We are also seeing China continue to assert itself as the dominant global power, with its heightened crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong (and elsewhere) and reaping the dividends of investing in rare earth metals that go into so many electronics.

So, in 2022, I hope we can put the COVID thing to bed. And, I hope the less fervent followers of the former president start to realize what kind of person he truly is. The question has never been can he win again. The question is he should not ever be allowed to be in charge again. America needs to stop its own in fighting long enough that others like us fighting amongst ourselves as they take advantage.