2022 Was So Eager to Suck...

 

      ...it took Betty White from us today, two and a half weeks before her 100th birthday.

      This year started out much the same way. Yeah, we kicked Trump out of the White House the previous November then kept the winning streak going by electing two Democrats in the two Senate races in Georgia on January 5th.

     Then January 6th happened and swept all that away. Then there was Delta, then Omicron, then a massive national backlog of goods at our ports, rising gas prices and somehow, we found a way to blame President Biden for all this, his approval rating sinking to 40% in most polls. Fascists still laughably posing as Republican statesmen smell chum in the water and are licking their chops and rubbing their hands. Colorado's burning down. Half the nation is waterlogged, the other half parched with a never-ending drought.

     White people are attacking black people. Black people are attacking Asians and no one can seem to agree on anything. I reject your cheery "Happy Holidays" because it's Merry Christmas! I don't care what Dr. Fauci, who's advised seven presidents, says about coronavirus. I'll do my own research! (Cough cough)

     I'd ceased making New Year's resolutions decades ago, knowing I wouldn't listen to myself or hold myself to my promises. I figure, if I manage to pay my bills on time, treat everyone decently starting with my loved ones and produce one or two novels a year, I'm ahead of the curve. That's about all the discipline I can muster these days. Another thing I decided was during 2021 to stop believing the next year will be better, that it has to be better, than this one.

     Mrs. JP and I have lost some loved ones this past year (and one notable example of someone who wasn't quite as loved). This year, as with any other, has had its share of ups and downs for us in particular and for the nation and the world in general.

     We have housing security for the next year and have no food insecurity. My 63rd birthday's coming up on the 16th and I'm grateful that, especially during this pandemic that still hatefully lingers in our nation, I will observe that day in my usual ruddy good health.

     Politically, yes, we kept the House (while losing 13 seats) and barely took control of the Senate with the addition of Vice President Harris. The question is, to quote Ben Franklin, can we keep it? We could get stupid and complacent about it and just throw up our hands and say, "Well, one chamber of Congress or another flips to the other party after a new administration takes over and it's happened in almost every midterm since 1988. There's nothing we can do about it."

     We could go back to our usual 40% voter turnout rate, although a sky-high turnout, the highest in 120 years, was alone what kept our nation from turning into the Fourth Reich. We will probably let history and the so-called pundits give Congress back to the fascists who are already vowing vengeance for daring to take them to task for their complicity on January 6th. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is suggesting blue state-voting Democrats moving to red states should have their voting rights "temporarily" suspended for not voting their way.

     So, yeah, we could be stupid about it and voluntarily give Congress back to the Nazis who will then gleefully go about implementing their scorched earth strategy and paralyze the rest of the Biden agenda because hyper partisanship will be the order of the day instead of putting the nation's interests first. We're Americans, the stupidest, least informed voters on the planet, the ones who inflicted a shambling, brain-dead, drug-addled homunculus on the rest of an unsuspecting world in 2016.

     So, you know what? No more power of positive thinking bullshit, no more happy thoughts because despite our collective pleas for a respite from 2020's horrors a year ago, none of that amounted to a pile of cold dog shit. The most we can do, the most effective way to prepare for the challenges awaiting us after midnight tonight is to prepare for the worst, without hoping for the best. 

     America is a nation in which at least a quarter of us are completely insane and, most alarmingly, some of those people are in Congress and state congresses. They'd long ago begun stealing your right to vote or to make it harder. Wait for the return of literacy tests, poll taxes and armed right wing challengers at the polls. They're coming.

     All we can do is to counter that racist backlash for 2020 is to again come out in full force and vote like our lives depended on it because it very well may. Cross your t's and dot your i's and make sure your vote is counted and keep pushing back against Republican lies that one election or another is stolen because you know they will.

     Because, to quote a certain cryptofascist, "You've gotta fight like hell because if you don't, you won't have a country left."