2021 Year in Review: Civil War Redux

Attempted Coup

The biggest news story of the year occurred just six days into it, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying the electoral victory of Joe Biden.  For the first time in the 233 year history of our constitutional republic, we did not witness a peaceful transfer of power.  Instead, Trumpsters rioted for hours and have continued to falsely claim that the election was fraudulent.  States controlled by Republicans have used this lie to justify passing draconian voter suppression laws designed to prevent Democratic voters in urban areas from exercising their fundamental right to participate in our democracy.

The folks behind this attempted coup are not just the vulgar angry mob that desecrated the home of our democracy.  The organizers include Trump and his minions, back by the leaders of the same Southern former slave states who tried to secede from the United States in 1861.  The most depressing thing about this deplorable incident is that Trumpsters are still fighting for the same lost cause as their ancestors – to keep White patriarchy in total control of America.

To this end, they are waging a renewed civil war against the rest of the country and in support of the notion that White Supremacists should rule our country forever.  Arrayed against them is the coming future of a multicultural democracy where people of all races, nationalities and creeds participate equally in making decisions that affect all of us.  Progressive Democrats in multicultural states like California and New York are leading this new wave, but they face fierce opposition from entrenched powerful interests who benefit from White minority rule and are determined to maintain it, even if that means disenfranchising everyone else and destroying what’s left of our democracy along the way.

This new civil war is not a fight over territory, like the last one.  The real battle lines are drawn between urban and rural America.  America’s cities, even in the deepest, reddest parts of the South, are becoming multicultural hubs that attract newcomers who represent all the diversity of the world.  Atlanta is as blue as Los Angeles these days, which is why Georgia elected two Democratic senators for the first time in nearly 30 years.  Meanwhile, America’s rural areas are retrogressing to their original Wild West origins – heavily-armed bands of White men threatening anyone who stands in their way of exercising unlimited power to dominate everyone else.

This new civil war is a battle for the future of our nation.  Will we finally ensure liberty and justice for all Americans, as we pledge each time we salute our flag, or will we regress back to our White supremacist past and embrace a dystopian future of racial apartheid and inequality?  The battle lines have been drawn and the fight has begun.  Which side will you choose?

COVID 21

The other looming news story this year is the continued unwelcome presence of COVID among us.  The pandemic that started early in 2020 has blown right through one year and now has mutated into a second year of rampaging illness and death.  As of this writing, over 800,000 Americans and 4.3 million humans have lost their lives to the worst global epidemic to inflict humanity.

The saddest fact about COVID 21 is that nearly all the deaths were preventable.  As of February of this year, vaccines became available that prevent serious COVID illness or death.  Despite being widely available and free since last spring, 27 percent of American adults are refusing to get vaccinated due to misinformation about the vaccine and the disease it is meant to prevent.  Meanwhile, in many parts of the developing world, less than 10 percent of the population has been vaccinated because of the greed of big Pharma and its unwillingness to share the vaccine with those living in poverty who desperately need it.  Left unchecked, COVID keeps replicating and mutating, circling the globe and causing new waves of outbreaks.  The Omicron variant started in South Africa among unvaccinated AIDS survivors and quickly has spread across the world and into all 50 U.S. states.  If we don’t do more to vaccinate the world, we will see this virus mutate all the way through the Greek alphabet until we reach Omega and perhaps with it, the end of humanity.

Amid this continuing tragedy, human stupidity has sunk to new lows.  Quackery is all the rage these days, from ingesting bleach and horse de-worming pills to literally eating “magic” dirt.  All are offered as alternatives to a scientifically-proven vaccine that provides over 90 percent immunity with rare side effects.  Republican pols have latched onto anti-vaxxer nonsense to undermine public health and condemn their own supporters to death.  They are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives in order to ensure that Joe Biden and the Democrats fail to contain the pandemic and therefore lose power in the next election cycle.

The freedom that Trumpsters constantly scream about is really the freedom to play Russian roulette with everyone’s lives. Go ahead, Trumpsters urge their supporters, go out there unmasked and unvaccinated and catch COVID and spread it to everyone you meet.  Who cares what happens to you or them next?  Certainly not the fully vaccinated politicians and right wing media hosts who encourage their followers to ignore science and “own the libs” until the grim reaper appears at their bedside.  We see them being interviewed from their ICUs, full of regret and begging for the vaccine.  By then, it’s too late.    My question is: How stupid can a country get and still be a country?

America’s Endless Wars

This year also witnessed the end of America’s longest war and for the first time in 20 years, we are at peace with the world.  The end in Afghanistan was not pretty. We slinked away in the dead of night on military cargo planes while the Taliban overran the country in a matter of days.  We left behind a broken country in the hands of our declared enemy.  But if we had stayed another 20 years, we would not have achieved anything better.  As Alexander the Great, the British and the Russians learned before us, Afghanistan is not a place that welcomes foreigners.  Though it is sad to see women’s rights reversed and people starving, our continued presence was serving no good end. We wasted 2.3 trillion dollars on nation-building and now the Taliban own it.

Despite the end of active warfare, Congress gave the Pentagon a 24 billion dollar raise for next year.  I predict peace won’t last very long.  The only question is: Where is the next battlefield?

Social Media

The social media empire we all depend on for our daily buzz and for some, the daily news, caught a lot of flak this year.  Maybe our dependency is creating pushback against the 24/7 bombardment of commentary, puffery, fancy dancing and advertisements that passed for social entertainment in 2021.  We learned that Facebook knew its Instagram was driving teen girls to suicide and encouraged the trend.  We learned that Twitter allowed all manner of violence to spread freely across its platform.  We learned that our ISP and our browsers are tracking our every click and feeding us customized ads to keep us endlessly clicking.  Many people realize they are addicted to social media, unable to look away and increasingly living their lives in the metaverse, not reality.

This leaves people isolated and lonely.  No matter how many likes your FB post gets, it is nothing like getting real hugs from real people.  America is suffering another epidemic spawned by COVID – an epidemic of loneliness.  More of us live alone than at any time in our history.  One-quarter of Americans are estranged from their own families.  The homeless are mostly single and famililess.  We sit in front of our computers alone and pretend to interact with other humans who are actually bots half of the time.  Loneliness on this scale breeds depression, but it also breeds selfishness.  We are seeing more people loudly clamoring for their own rights while trampling on the rights of everyone else.  We are seeing greed-driven scams on an unprecedented level.  Ultimately, severe loneliness can produce sociopaths who lose all touch with humanity and all moral bearings.  They grab their assault weapons and go out in a hail of inhumanity.

For most, online connections have saved us throughout this pandemic.  Can you imagine the past 18 months without the Internet?  We can’t expect social media to fix all of our social ills, but it shouldn’t be allowed to make things worse.  The behemoths who currently run the metaverse should have to follow some basic rules of the road, including not allowing their sites to be used to preach violence and hate and to promote scams and disinformation.   We should be able to control our own personal information. Our government has failed to act to hold any of these companies and their moguls accountable, despite numerous televised hearings passing as congressional oversight.

New Space Race

Speaking of tech moguls, 2021 saw the dawn of a new space age – one in which private citizens launched into space on rockets built by private billionaires. While the technical achievements are laudable, many questioned the priorities of billionaires spending on a joy ride to the edges of space instead of fixing the problems right here on earth.

I like the idea of exploring the cosmos and hope that privatization will eventually lead to wider access, but really these launchings are just publicity stunts for now.  If the space billionaires want to do something truly useful in the field of aviation, they should concentrate on a supersonic space plane that will whisk people from New York to Tokyo in two hours.  Now that’s an innovation that every global traveler would jump aboard.

Climate Inaction

Mother nature packed a wallop in 2021, leaving no doubt that our climate is undergoing rapid change for the worse.  Here in California, we have withstood another severe drought and seen wildfires attack our beloved giant sequoias.  In the Midwest and Southeast, record tornados, hurricanes and floods have pummeled residents.  Across the globe, floods or droughts reached historic proportions and the ensuing destruction and  famine are confronting humanity with an existential threat.  So, it’s all hands on deck, right?  We are all working as one human race to stop global warming before it destroys the planet, right?

Not quite, actually.  While the UN COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow did generate a lot of promises, including a collective effort to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the details reveal that none of these promises are backed by accountability for action.  Countries can promise to cut emissions all they wish at some distant point in the future, after it’s too late, but meanwhile they continue to burn coal, oil and methane at an unsustainable rate.  In the U.S., efforts to take modest steps, such as seal old, abandoned oil wells that spew methane, have been blocked by the fossil fuel industry’s grip on our politicians.  Coal baron Joe Manchin refuses to let America switch to renewable energy and has single-handedly blocked any meaningful action on climate in the U.S.  One powerful millionaire who  represents a small coal-producing state, along with 50 Senate Republicans, who collectively represent only 43% of the US population but 100% of Big Oil, get to dictate national energy policy.  With that level of opposition, it is going to be an uphill battle all the way to oblivion.

Reproductive Rights Repealed

Ever since the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion back in 1973, religious conservatives have vowed to stack the court with their own disciples and overturn the ruling.  Nearly 50 years later, with six Catholics now on the Supreme Court, the religious right has finally gotten their prayers answered.  The Court is allowing a Texas law to stand which turns abortion foes into vigilantes who can sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion.  They will likely go even further next year and strike down abortion rights altogether.  If the government will now control women’s reproductive rights, will they also be willing to feed, clothe, house and educate all the babies that they want women to bear?   Don’t hold your breath.

The other issue this raises is whether our constitution applies equally to all Americans.  The Court’s repeal will mean leaving each state to make its own rules, so that half the country will outlaw abortion and half will not.  This is further evidence that the country is coming apart at the seams.  Your constitutional rights now depend on the state where you reside, not the United States of America.  What other rights are likely to go next?  Look for gay marriage, birth control, voting rights and civil rights to all become dependent on state law.  Half the country will ban the above and half the country will maintain those rights.  And what happens when a gay married couple decides to move from California to Texas?  Will they have to annul their marriage to satisfy Texas law banning gay marriage? Will some anonymous third party be able to sue them for damages?  Civil War redux.

Great Resignation

The business world continued COVID remote policies, with offices shut down and professionals working from home.  But for those on the frontlines who can’t just email their work, 2021 has proven particularly challenging.  Health care workers, customer service reps, retail staff, construction and repair workers and many others could not mail in their work performance.  They are the true heroes of the workforce, proving once and for all that the true job creators and doers are those at the bottom of the economic pyramid who toil for low wages in life-threatening working conditions to keep the rest of us fed, housed, clothed and healthy.  Without them, our economy collapsed.

As the pandemic wore on into a second year, the American workforce voted with its feet and the vote was overwhelmingly No.  No, we do not want to risk our health to serve others who are often threatening and obnoxious for wages that will not even sustain our existence.  And so Americans quit work in unprecedented numbers, peaking in September, when a record 4.4 million Americans dropped out of the workforce.

The workforce shortage has prompted a lot of commentary that reveals much about the state of American labor.  From the right, we heard the theory that the government was doing too much for the working class, with generous unemployment benefits and social welfare programs meant to help people weather the layoffs caused by the pandemic in 2020.  Right wingers have a decidedly negative view of humanity, believing that workers must be forced to work by threat of starvation, since otherwise they are a bunch of lazy slobs who would prefer to lie on their loungers, get drunk and binge watch Netflix.

Labor economists who study the workforce for a living discovered a different dynamic at work.  They found the vast majority of people who permanently left the workforce were senior workers over the age of 55, not the millennials who have been maligned as the slacker generation.  For those who have read my yearly reviews, I have been warning you for at least 10 years now that a huge wave of retirement was coming as the 76 million strong Boomer generation reached their golden years.  COVID appears to have accelerated the trend, with younger seniors in their fifties opting for early retirement rather than risking their lives continuing to work amid a pandemic.

As a senior myself, I can relate to those who have had their brush with death and now realize that life is short, so you better not procrastinate.  COVID has shown us the precarious state of our lives and prompted a sense of immediacy that I have not felt before.  Live for the moment.  Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.

Another phenomenon driving the Great Resignation is the entrepreneurial trend sweeping the U.S.  Forced by layoffs and lockdowns to work from home, many people have discovered that running an online, home-based business gives them better economic opportunities than working for someone else to make them rich.  The number of new small business startups has grown throughout the pandemic.  Although it’s counter-intuitive to start a business in the middle of a pandemic recession, many entrepreneurs are tapping into new virtual ways of conducting business and are finding success.  As someone who counsels young people on how to develop new business plans, I am encouraged that COVID may actually be creating a whole new way of working, where we operate as independent contractors and entrepreneurs rather than being the sole possession of a single employer.  This gives people more freedom and control over their lives, but it comes with substantial risk.  Small business owners need a social safety net just like workers do.

Personal News

My business has been adversely affected like everyone else’s.  I took only one business trip in 2021 to present at the ATD Conference in Salt Lake City.  In the past, I was on the road about once a month, including trips overseas.  COVID hit at an awkward time in my career.  I am past usual retirement age and so I have confronted the prospect of closing my consulting practice and stopping work altogether.  Since I enjoy what I do and feel that I can continue to contribute to my profession, I have reduced my practice to two long-time clients who have sustained me for the past two decades.  I am teaching virtual instructor-led webinars for one client and conducting virtual training audits for the other.  In both cases, I simply walk down the hall from my bedroom, click on my computer and I am at work.  It’s so convenient, I can’t quit.  It also gives me plenty of control over my schedule, allowing me to pursue other interests while paying the bills.  I am finding time for golf and piano.  I also finally finished my novel and started writing a handbook on training certificate programs with several colleagues.

So, I do not plan on following my fellow Boomers into permanent retirement.  I plan to rage, rage against the dying of the light.  I plan to be productive until I can no longer continue.  I look forward to giving back and paying it forward to the generations that follow, starting with my own sons and granddaughter and assisting others in my community.  I am especially focused on our youth, who are our future.  They have been through a harrowing experience that will define them forever, just like the turmoil of the Sixties defined my generation. That’s why I continue to lead the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce’s Future Business Leader scholarship program for high school entrepreneurs.  They deserve all the help we can offer to overcome the challenges of the present and build a world that works for everyone.

Priceless Moments

Here are a few of my favorite moments and people who made history in 2021.

To All the Unruly Air Passengers: Of course we understand that you are stressed out to the max.  So are the rest of us.  But how does melting down in a full-blown toddler tantrum in front of hundreds of your fellow passengers possibly help matters? And all over wearing a mask?  You wear goofy Halloween masks and paint your face for football games, so what’s so terrible about protecting yourself and others from a deadly virus?

To Gavin Newsom, CA Governor: Fate has not been kind to your administration, beset with the worst pandemic in our history and then forced to face a recall election that Republicans hoped to steal.  Lucky for you, the clown car of 24 Republicans who ran against you could only collectively garner 38% of the electorate.  This virtually guarantees your reelection in ’22.  Just don’t let it go to your head.  Your biggest obstacle is your own arrogance.

To Simone Biles & Naomi Osaka: It took incredible courage for both of you to publicly acknowledge the mental health challenges you have battled. In doing so, you have broken the wall of silence that prevents others from seeking help for their depression and psychosis.  This pandemic has given us all an evil case of the “twisties,” so we can relate to your mental challenges.

To Elon Musk: Time Magazine chose you as its person of the year, citing your impact on the future of electric vehicles and space travel.  Being the richest person on the planet didn’t hurt either.  One of your Tweets can move billions in global financial markets.  With that much influence and power, it would be nice if you thought about someone other than yourself once in a while.  Your recent move to Texas to avoid California state income tax tells us all we need to know about your priorities.

To Britney Spears: The Free Britney movement celebrated your liberation from an abusive conservatorship.  You are now free to spend your millions anyway you wish.  Let’s hope you do so more wisely than your father did.  You could start by rewarding all those who demanded your liberation.

To QAnon Cultists: None of your bizarre predictions have come true and yet you continue to wait at Dealy Plaza in Dallas, site of JFK’s assassination, for the late President and his deceased son to return triumphantly like the second coming of Jesus.  Meanwhile, your Shaman is doing 41 months in prison for assaulting the Capitol on January 6^th.  Maybe it’s time to admit that Q is just another letter in the alphabet and just another scam on the gullible.

 

 

 

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