Well, an installment of Naughty and Nice for the year 2020 really can only begin one way:
When I was a young lad, my father tried to kill the entire family.
While other kids I knew were making trips to Disneyland or cruises or Six Flags or goodness knows where else, my family drove a beater Subaru just across the border into New Hampshire.
No, our more fateful destination was Mt. Washington. The nearly 2 kilometer-high peak is the tallest in a thousand miles. And at the summit, a small museum, radio transmitters and a weather station.
A brisk passenger rail line safely brings tourists to the summit while offering fantastic views all day long. For somewhat less money, you can instead drive up a 7.4-mile twisting, turning road that is extremely deficient in guardrails in a car that was overdue for a brake job (more of an issue for the trip back down) that my parents eventually couldn’t sell for more than $100.
The steep grading of the accent left the poor car constantly on the verge of overheating. While there were several stops at scenic lookouts where the car could safely be parked to rest, my father often opted to just let the car sit on the side of the road closest to where the guardrails weren’t.
The course record for driving up Mt. Washington at the time was less than 10 minutes. It took us well over an hour. It felt like days.
Upon your return to the bottom, which if nothing else will be assured by gravity, you’re handed a bumper sticker reading “This car climbed Mt. Washington.” A badge of dubious honorability only useful for identifying which used vehicles you shouldn’t buy.
Today, and in the days to come, I feel like the old family Subaru which Dad probably came closer to killing than the rest of us. I came into this year already in rough shape, was poorly equipped to surmount the challenge, and my only reward for surviving it is to tell others how damaged I am.
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1. Covid, Covid, Covid
Everyone figured they’d mapped out the ways in which 2020 could go horribly wrong right at the start, but let this year be the prime example of why no one should do that. It was expected that COVID-19 would make its way around the world after how it halted life in China at the end of 2019, but no one predicted just how bad it would get. This went double in the United States, with a largely abysmal response outside a one-time stimulus package thanks to a void in federal leadership. Deaths have continued to pile up, and it’s been difficult to have events and gatherings not only because of the spread, but due to how the bare minimum has been done to even try and stop it. The virus has helped solidify 2020 as one for the history books in the worst way, though it was hardly the only issue in a dreadful year.
2. American politics just gets nuttier
The American political landscape has been crazy ever since former president Barack Obama was elected, which drove conservatives mad. But they really got terrible when Donald Trump was elected, and tightened his grip on the Republican party. It’s been crazy for most of the year, as Republicans have claimed liberals are the real cancel culture-loving fascists who want to defund the police (a leftist position), but no one was prepared for how bad Trump’s efforts to contest the election and overturn the results would be. It’s nice that these efforts have failed, but it’s proof that the Biden era won’t lead to the “brunch is back” calm that some were hoping for.
3. Climate change just gets worse
We continue to see the worsening effects of climate change every year. It started out with the horrible brushfires in Australia and the fires in the rainforest in Brazil, which continued with more fires on the west coast of the US so severe that they blanketed the skies in an ominous sci-fi-style red hue. These were combined with the record-breaking hurricane season, one in which so many spawned that meteorologists had to wander into the Greek alphabet. Considering the trends, it’s very likely that this is only going to get worse. Stay tuned for the next annual update in next year’s Naughty/Nice.
4. Facebook will never learn
Facebook keeps promising that they’ll put their best foot forward and make the social media network a better place for everyone with an account. But who believes that at this point? Facebook continued to stumble with addressing misinformation, and several times demonstrated that they don’t care to do much about it. The most noteworthy incident of the year involved Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who called for the beheadings of two federal government officials in a video posted to Facebook. The video was deleted, but they never took the necessary step of banning his account, which made it clear that nothing he does will be bad enough for them to do so.
5. Local news devastation
Local news was already in bad shape after several years due to dwindling interest in preserving local papers and right-wing organizations taking over too many publications and local stations. But the pandemic worsened everything, with owners using it as justification for laying off staffers or, worse, shuttering the papers entirely. While big cities still have at least one paper (though they also suffered losses), it’s tough for small town residents to stay informed. When they can’t get their news through local sources, they’ll often turn to Facebook. The above should show how bad of a problem that can be, and it could only get worse.
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1. Hey, Trump lost
The period before and after the 2020 US presidential election has been unprecedentedly bonkers, to frightening and hilarious degrees. But the election itself and the Electoral College meeting couldn’t have made it clearer that Donald Trump lost the race to Joe Biden. I can’t imagine how bad things could have become with Trump getting a second term, and though his administration will do as much as they can to make things worse and try and torch the place on the way out before departing in January, it’s better than the alternative. It’s been an extremely long lame duck period, but at least better days are on the horizon. Whether those “better” days will be “good,” however, remains to be seen.
2. Streaming services stepped up
The key streaming services came out with plenty of good content this year, to no surprise. We’re living in a Covid-19 pandemic, which led to people spending more time at home for the justifiable fear of contracting the virus. There wasn’t a better period for services like Netflix, Hulu, and others to debut plenty of original content, and for others like HBO Max to launch. Not that all the new content was necessary given how many of them have archived movies and shows that several users (no, not just me) haven’t watched yet, but more the merrier.
3. The Covid vaccine
The Covid-19 pandemic has killed far too many around the world, and has halted life and forced events and gatherings to be cancelled throughout the year. It’s been a hell on Earth, but relief is on the way in the form of a quickly-developed vaccine. The first vials are being given to healthcare workers, retirement community workers, and the most vulnerable among the population starting this week. It will take longer for the “average” person to get it, and even longer to wander around in crowds safely again unmasked. But to repeat something I said above: Better days are coming.
4. Download caps disappeared… for a time
The United States’ greedy internet service providers had mercy on us peasants for a short time during the pandemic. Thanks to people spending more time at home, several ISPs suspended download caps for customers who were downloading and streaming more. It was a nice period that lasted for a good portion of the second quarter of the year. So, it’s a pity it couldn’t go further than that, and Comcast in particular will exact their revenge on users by imposing new download caps on states that previously didn’t have any in 2021. But the period where we didn’t have them sure was swell.
5. Black Lives Matter went mainstream
Before 2020, Black Lives Matter was considered a fringe far-left movement that was detrimental to winning elections, blamed for turning too many “moderate” (read: white) voters off and possibly leading to the election of Donald Trump. But it was this year when a lot of people, especially in America, realized the movement had a point about police violence disproportionately affecting black people. It’s a shame it took the deaths of two people, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, for this to happen, but it happened nonetheless.
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1. It’s a goddamned pandemic
At the start of 2020 the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) barely made a blip in China. By the middle of January, health officials worried that the country was underestimating and downplaying the number of cases. By the end of the month fears were spreading about the growing epidemic in China and the entire Hubei province was locked down. On January 21, the first coronavirus case was discovered in the US. In February it became clear the virus was a bigger threat than SARS and MERS. By February Italy would see a major lockdown, followed by several major countries around the world in March. While a national emergency was declared by President Trump, the nation would never fully lock down with states and cities left to make their own decisions. Since then things haven’t gone well. The United States is one of the hardest hit countries in the world with deaths approaching 300,000 as of this writing. Worldwide, 1,636,419 people have died. There have been over 73 million cases with over 51 million people having recovered. COVID-19 cases can range from no symptoms to being severly ill with it taking months to recover or death. This isn’t even mentioning the fierce denial of many that the virus isn’t an issue or is a hoax. That comes on top of a recession worse than what we’ve seen in 2008.
2. Politics, politics, politics
Had it not been for COVID-19, 2020 would have already been a crap year due to it being a presidential election in a country that hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War. First, we had the impeachment trial of president Trump which took place in January. The vote to impeach fell entirely on party lines with every republican voting “no” and every democrat voting “yes” except for a few that crossed party lines to vote “no.” With that, Trump became the third president in history to be impeached. Not that it mattered because in February the republican controlled senate voted to acquit the president, with only the lone Mitt Romney crossing party lines to vote to remove with democrats. Ladies and gentleman, that was just February. Later in the year we would have congress failing to pass more needed stimulus money for citizens and businesses hit hard by the pandemic because of lockdowns or a lack of consumer demand. Speaking of pandemics, we also have various lock down protests held in state capitals around the country, in part spurred in by President Trump. Then came the attempted kidnapping and murder of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer by a miltia group. There was also the total hypocrisy surrounding the Supreme Court pick of Amy Coney Barret versus what happened in 2016 with Merrick Garland. Even the election brought pain. When it became clear that Trump had lost to former Vice President Joe Biden, he refused to concede, demanded recounts in various states, and filed a series of losing lawsuits to try and overturn the results in an attempted coup. Fortunately, almost all those lawsuits failed, the single lawsuit won was meaningless, and Joe Biden’s victory was recently ratified by the Electoral College.
3. Raging Wildfires
Another fitting start to 2020 was the continuing Australian bushfires which were known as Black Summer. They burned from June 2019 until May of 2020. The fires killed 34 people, killed three billion animals (driving some into extinction), burned over 46 million acres of land, destroyed over 5900 buildings, and cost the country an estimated $103 billion in Australian dollars. This isn’t even getting to the environmental damage which includes massive CO2 emissions and hazy air that traveled as far as South America. In September it was the Western United States turn for another year of devastating wildfires. These fires raged from California to Washington, killed about 37 people, burned around 8.2 million acres including thousands of buildings, and cost over $2 billion in damages. The air pollution was immense as smoke and haze hung over the skies for days, and winds blew the smoke as far as the east coast. Unfortunately, wildlife didn’t escape unharmed from the fires either as many endangered species lost habitats that will take years to recover. Let’s not forget about those wildfires that also burned in Brazil around the same time as the North American fires. I don’t think 2020 was supposed to be this kind of lit.
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1. Creating a vaccine in record time
As early as January scientists were taking the first steps to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. By the end of November Pfizer and Moderna had finished the research on the first vaccines with an efficacy rate of over 90%. The first limited doses are being distributed in some countries starting this week. Getting a vaccine created in less than a year is impressive, considering it took years and decades to create other vaccines. It helps that these new vaccines eschew the need for weakened live viruses or dead viruses and instead use messenger RNA (mRNA). Work on the vaccine was piggybacked off of previous work on the SARS and MERS vaccines (as they are similar coronaviruses). Add government funding which virtually took all the risk away and the recipe for success was created. The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at temperatures of -70C and doses are limited, so it’ll take a while before the general population can be vaccinated. (So keep on wearing masks and social distancing in public.) Still, it’s nice to know that some of 2021 may be salvaged.
2. The end of Trump’s presidency
Going into 2020, I thought the Democratic primary election for president was going to be a repeat of 2016. One big difference was the huge number of candidates running for president and the diversity of the field. From the first votes cast in Iowa in late January, the field quickly began to narrow. By March it was mainly Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders as the main constants, down from a field of 28. In April, Sanders conceded to Biden, which cleared the field early. After a contentious general campaign (one presidential debate being cancelled because Trump contracted COVID-19) and election, Joe Biden managed to beat Trump within a comfortable margin. Biden won 306 electoral college votes (270 are needed to win) versus Trump’s 232. On the votes counted side, Biden won with a turnout larger than Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, as over 81 million people voted for him. Trump also increased his turn out, as over 74 million people turned out hoping to reelect the president. If anything about 2020 or even Trump had been normal, this would have been a great time to celebrate. However, as I pointed out in my naughty section, Trump has refused to concede and millions of his followers are adamant the election was stolen. January 20, 2021, is going to be an interesting day indeed.
3. An awakening for social justice
I can’t state enough how pivotal 2020 has been in terms of an awakening to racial justice. The murders of unarmed black people by police and citizens were gut-wrenching, as was the violence that accompanied some of the protests. That said, the world joining in to protest racial injustice was one of the most uplifting moments of the year. As I’ve stated over and over again, it’s not clear how far some promised reforms will go, but no one will brush racism off as something that occured in the past, as it’s very much alive. Awakening to that means acknowledging the problem. Doing something significant about the problem will take more time, unfortunately.
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