“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”– Abraham Lincoln

If I’d still been writing the blog in 2020, it would have been a banner year. I’d likely written 30-40 posts about the events that year. At my normal rate of writing, this would have been 60-80,000 words. How am I going to condense that into a single (approximately 2000 word) post? Hindsight and perspective will allow for a lot of compression. If I’m right about the perspective, this won’t be the last time I touch on what 2020 can teach us. More importantly, we didn’t learn much from the year.

It is not much of a leap to say 2020 was the worst year of our lives, although 2024 still has time! The centerpiece for this disaster was the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects. We had a horrible election too. A brutal murder and reaction generated more racism in response. All of this was amplified by incompetent leadership. The USA performed horribly during the pandemic by any objective measure. The reasons for this are both specific and structural. The broad response to the pandemic has also had lasting influences on our lives today. Whether we like it or not, today’s world was shaped in 2020.

We sit here in 2024 with a monumental decision in front of the American public. We have the worst choice of Presidents in history. Either decision is bad. On the one hand, you have a declining feeble elderly man whose best days are well behind him. He’s not terribly likable or charismatic. He is decent, but absolutely uninspiring. On the other hand, we have a complete and total asshole. We have a crisis of leadership and either man will deepen it.

As I will discuss, Trump has demonstrated incompetence and horrible judgment. He constantly lies and seems to have no comprehension of truth. He botched the response to a crisis and actively made things worse. He is racist, sexist, misogynist, incurious, and ignorant. He is a convicted felon and legally judged to have committed rape. He is impulsively and habitually criminally minded. It is an awful choice and we are likely to make the worst of it. What it really confirms is that we didn’t learn a fucking thing from the mistakes of 2020. That is unforgivable.

The central drama of the year was the Covid-19 pandemic. Starting off in China, it spread across the globe and the United States. It wreaked havoc everywhere in the world, bringing death, fear, and chaos. Initially, the worst of the pandemic attacked Western Europe, with Italy getting the worst of it. Soon the massive death toll came to the USA, centering on New York City. As the virus was new, uncertainty reigned. Public health and medical officials knew little, and mistakes from caution abounded. The vulnerable died at a dizzying rate without any immunity to the illness. The medical systems strained and broke under the weight of the severely ill.

A couple of themes can already be seen at the outset of the pandemic. The controversy of the origin of the crisis shows a lack of trust and faith in institutions. We saw the chaos our federal decentralized system of government produced. Rather than local and better adaptation, the response was almost uniformly worse. Everything was made political. Liberal leaders tended to overreact and chose safety and caution. Conservative leaders chose business and minimized human life. Both sides were wrong and went too far. Liberals ended up hurting the future of children and their education. Conservatives took actions that led to more death, especially the poor, minorities, and the vulnerable.

Under this stress, we got to see the mettle of our leaders. In the USA, our leaders did horrendously. The most awful was our President. He seemed to first wish the pandemic away and then provided divisive and unvetted advice. He undermined those trying to provide expertise and guidance. As a result of inaction, Trump made the pandemic worse. The actions he took made it worse. The vaccine was the only saving grace. More true to form, Trump sowed dissent and chaos politically. This included attacking the vaccine when it became available. A crisis that should have brought people together divided them. Instead of making the country stronger, he made the country weaker and less united.

“In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.”– John F. Kennedy

Personally, the year was a mixed bag. As the pandemic broke in the USA and the country closed down, I was with my family with my mother in hospice. It was from entirely different issues than Covid that she died. The backdrop to her passing was the world closing down. When I looked up from this, I found the nation closed down. Suddenly my wife and I were working from home. We adapted, as did everyone.

Working from home was rocky at first, but improved with better software and better habits. The whole arrangement had distinct advantages, removing the commute. Meals could be prepared during the day and dinner was served early. Exercise was a challenge, but equipment was purchased and walking became central too. I went 4-7 miles a day. In spite of the health challenges and the viral threat, I felt like the whole experience improved my physical health. This wasn’t my only benefit.

All in all, we did well personally. We both appreciated working from home and put ourselves to work on major home projects. We formed our own pod of friends to retain a social life. We and our friends made conscious choices based on our risk profiles. It was greatly enabled by working from home. We balanced our safety with our sanity. I fully recognize that all this good is firmly grounded in a lot of privilege and luck. For many people, the situation was terrible. One of these was my son. He was at the end of his Bachelor’s degree and working from home didn’t work for him. It was a microcosm of the damage done to millions of young people’s lives.

I also need to acknowledge that many people could not work from home. With schools out and day cares closed this was an exceptionally difficult time. Our children are grown and we didn’t have to try to work while managing day care and school. Anyone with children had a difficult time.

We also saw an online community spring up for Zoom-based cocktail parties. These mixers were amazing, well run, and satisfying. Not as good as doing this in person, but set the standard for online meetings. Frankly, my work meetings have never equaled the quality and intent of these Zoom meetings. Granted, the online meeting software and basic approach have improved leaps and bounds. It shows what motivated people and good leadership can do for meetings, even remote. Of course, all this was true with in-person meetings too. Work meetings have had problems forever.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”― J.R.R. Tolkien

In the midst of the pandemic, as the first stage of it drew to a close, something else terrible happened. A black man (George Floyd) was brutally and callously murdered by a police officer. This happened while other officers looked on without stopping it. Essentially, the murder was filmed, and the film went viral. It went out into a nation that was relentlessly online. People were properly outraged. People went to the streets to protest in massive numbers. This became the Black Lives Matter movement. It spawned some of the largest public protests in recent history.

It was born out of the over-militarized American police and a virtual acceptance of police abuse and violence by many. Police and their thin blue line attitude allow abuse to persist. Rather than demand legal and proper behavior in their ranks, police protect lawbreaking in their ranks. The left also overreacted with some well-intentioned and genuinely stupid ideas. Key was the defund the police stance. It was still incredibly counter-productive and just the start. It appeared to be a genuine racial reckoning. The overreach on the left was the undoing of something needed.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”― Martin Luther King Jr.

It also produced a huge backlash from the right. With the defund movement as cover, the right attacked the reaction to police abuse and murder. Much of this was supported and encouraged by the President. He is horribly racist after all. It also drove more insidious efforts like the label of “critical race theory” for racially sensitive education. CRT is absolute bullshit as actual CRT is a graduate-level legal theory (learned about Chris Rufo a brilliant, but horrible person). Nonetheless, it energized the right to remove any material that encouraged racial sensitivity. The right also engaged in violence at the protests. Most prominently, the coward Kyle Rittenhouse killed two people at a protest. In the end, it is arguable that the right won the day. Rather than a reckoning, we ended with a setback.

This gets to why we need to look back at 2020. There were numerous lessons we should have learned. We have not. We fucked up our response to things over and over. We made non-political things controversial. We attacked and undermined institutions and expertise. The result was objectively bad performance and lots of unnecessary dead people. We harmed the future of our children unnecessarily. We had painfully incompetent leadership. Rather than punish this incompetence and division, we may reward it. We are inviting disaster. An important question is why aren’t we learning? Why are we about to make some of the same mistakes again?

A big aspect of the pandemic year was how it affected one’s personal life in virtually every respect. One’s social life is an obvious thing, which takes a major hit removing the usual locales for getting together with people. We managed this by forming a small risk-informed pod of friends we continued to see. Our choices had a big impact on preserving our sanity. All things considered, we remained happy throughout the year.

Health is another obvious impact. For me, Covid-19 got in the way of health care. Covid-19 itself did not pose a problem personally. On the other hand, it got in the way of treating several problems. I have glaucoma and during the first half of 2020 I had a permanent minor loss of vision. I was also suffering from AFib during 2020. The pandemic modestly slowed my treatment. I ultimately had two ablation surgeries that appear to have fixed the problem (in 2022). Still, these medical issues were impacted by the overburdened medical system. Compared to many, I got off easy, but not unscathed.

A big part of improving my happiness and sanity was working from home. For both my wife and me, this was a welcome change. Firstly, I had a manager who I could not stand. He couldn’t stand me either. I welcomed not having to see him regularly. In addition, it was a welcome relief from having to put on “a mask” and walk on eggshells around coworkers. I don’t mean a physical mask, but the masking of my authentic self in order to be acceptable. It led to the realization of how little I wanted to spend time with most of these people. Now I could choose who I graced with my physical presence explicitly. I’ve come to realize that authenticity in the workplace is a joke. At least if you are me. The real me is not fit for the modern workplace. I’m too outspoken, profane, and sharp-tongued. I suppose people who are quiet, reserved, and dull as dirt can be authentic. The pandemic gave me time to realize all this from living differently.

While all this positivity surrounded my personal situation, the same can’t be said for the USA. The USA has a rather extreme problem with leadership. This is not all about Trump either. Trump is a real indicator of the problem. We don’t demand competence from our leaders. It is all image and bullshit. The result is our institutions failing at every level. We are incredibly low on trust. No one trusts anyone else.

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”― Stephen R. Covey

Public health and medicine took the brunt of this, and this lack of trust made the pandemic worse. It cost many lives. Worse yet, the pandemic made it all even worse. Conspiracy theories abounded. The vaccines that should have been a triumph drove division. A national crisis that should have brought people together did the opposite. By the end of the year, we were more divided and cynical.

I cannot pass through 2020 without talking about the election. In many ways, it was the shitty icing on the shit sandwich of a year. On the one hand, it was a repudiation of the incompetence of the Trump administration. Yet about half the populace accepted the lie that the election was a fraud. There was no peaceful transition of power for the first time in nearly 250 years. The beaten and bruised reputation of the USA took another hit. The former beacon of democracy is a basket case. We left the year with dramatically less trust than we started; we started the year with very little trust.

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”― Plato

Here we stand four years on with decisions in front of us. The hard lessons of 2020 have been forgotten. We never learned from them. We could very well reward the worst President in the history of the nation with that office again. It would be a self-inflicted wound of unparalleled magnitude. We would be taking a risk on a leader that we know is incompetent. We would be choosing a habitual liar to lead a nation without trust. We would be choosing a leader who will destroy our institutions rather than repair and fix them. We will be courting disaster when we need healing. It may be national suicide.

It is all because we want to forget what happened in 2020.

Next week, we need to talk about people who are assholes and why they are awful.