Dear 2020,
By: Catherine Tripp
Tags: Pandemic Diaries, Masks, Pollution, 2020, Essay

Dear 2020,

By the time you read this, America’s death toll will be over 500,000 from the Novel Coronavirus. Having just lived through your tumultuous trek across the calendar, in the hopes of making sense of the Year of Curses and Lies, I am writing you this letter in our second month of the new year.

Even after the horrifying events of January 6th, 2021, toadies on Capitol Hill continued to object to the certification of the Electoral College. Objecting was a political stunt, a display of loyalty, a repetition of The Big Lie. Glued to the certification process, I watched as my nation’s capital was overrun by an angry mob. And in those precious weeks awaiting the swearing in of a new President, the Reign of Error continued unabated. Pardons were handed out like kisses at the world’s most expensive kissing booth — and those hundreds of kisses came with a lick of plague.

At least five simultaneous trends over the last twelve months, streams of history converging have led us to today, pinning our hopes on 2021. All those trends that that made you awful are not over yet.

TREND ONE: Planetary revenge

Did Mother Earth declare war on us this year? Earth is rearing up in fury, flinging the four elements of wind, water, fire and rock at us humans. Or has she been raging against our unceasing incursions for decades? Weather weirding, global warming, climate change — all these effects of pollution — and wasn’t that so easy to oppose? The Climate Crisis continues even while highways and streets empty and the air clears over cities that haven’t seen stars for fifty years. Conversely the skies in California last fall were so smoke-choked no air filters could keep up — Californians in valleys and bayside communities and even along the coast needed respirators to go outside to get the mail. Remember when conservatives wanted to conserve natural places? Remember when we talked about population explosion? And reproductive rights finally codified into law? After all of the steps forward, you 2020, ran gleefully backwards, whipping up support for the global war on science. The Flat Earther Society continues to get new members. “Here there be monsters” no longer describes any part of any map, it is us, we are the monsters.

Here’s the thing I don’t want to say about this, but I will: We had it coming. In 2019, the Earth fashioned her own killing machine, her viral chainsaw felling old and young alike, clear cutting our species, who have destroyed so many others. Previously unperturbed animals are trapped by humans invading formerly pristine wildernesses. And in their dying throes, the struggling animals released a new and invisible contagion.

2020, you blurred the line between natural disaster and man-made disaster. Is a plague of murder hornets a natural disaster or did we flush them out, like Wuhan bats? Are wildfires in the hundreds a natural disaster or did the West Coast move the water too far towards the cities? The Earth, in the form of microbes, is fighting back with deadly accuracy. Gaia’s got a subtle weapon now, teeth wrapped around a genetic ball and we recuse ourselves but cannot stem the tide.

Anti-compassionists espouse herd immunity, mistakenly calling it herd mentality, which at its essence is offering up our sick, our poor, our elderly to the ravages of infection for the sake of “the economy.” So, what we do for our dying ones, singing their special lullabies as trusting faces go slack, being at their side for the last closing of eyelids, the virus cheats us out of. Where do we store our fundamental human need to, wherever possible, be near and assuage the fears of our loves on their final journey? We can’t be nearby for the births, and we can’t be nearby for the deaths. None of this is alright.

TREND TWO: Instantaneous visuals

For the last decade or so, that which is recorded by brush or by camera, can be and is instantaneously disseminated. Education through visual storytelling takes no time to publish. Live moving images are widely available within seconds of the violence having been perpetrated, sometimes while it is actually happening “in real time” — think about that — real time. Not fake time. We hear the sounds of pleading, and see the images of a white uniformed man calmly murdering a handcuffed black man just as the video is released upon the world — the germs of truth — before editing or tampering can take place. Instantaneous publication is a double-edged sword. It offers no context, and we viewers have to string together outrage after outrage, so we can pile up enough to build a case for killing racism before it kills another innocent American. But we knew, all of us, we knew. American history from the textbooks glorifies war, buries the contributions of women and people of color. Still and to this day we gloss over the horrific crimes, the blood spilled, the moral stains on our national conscience. What do we tell our kids? Tell the truth honey, and I won’t be mad. Lying about what you did is so much worse than breaking a vase. The child can clean up the scattered shards but broken trust bows to no broom. Detention camps for would be immigrants are shown to be cages with innocent children lying beneath thin silver blankets. I see no bathrooms in those fenced in areas. Even after the specific crimes cease, pretending they didn’t happen invites the wound to fester. We know this.

TREND THREE: The Big Dogs cheat

Here in the midst of a global pandemic, from a golf resort somewhere, the vapid magician’s small hands are picking all the peas out from underneath all the walnuts and eating them. Smiling through the green flecks, he continues to grift while sycophants helplessly believe a fine nutritional treat awaits under the next empty shell. Clandestine clearinghouses for conspiracies and cults spew toxic bile and the Blue Wave is not strong enough to wash out the Red Death. The kleptocracy holds up bibles, and says God Bless America, while ignoring New Testament admonitions to be kind. Blasphemous me, I can’t help but see that blind faith in one book, in one origin myth, leads inexorably towards blind faith in men who say they have the answers.

Our differences, in color, in gender, in poverty, in wealth, in education, in ego, are rivening the species. Civil unrest (and I mean that literally — peaceful, civil protests every night) remind us that all is not well. In this broken economy, proletariats and bourgeoisie move farther apart, under a stark transfer of wealth whose sheer size boggles the mind. The rich and powerful are not even pretending to share anymore. What a relief that must be for the One Percent, paying much lower taxes on their “unearned income” and taking huge deductions for putting their names on buildings and foundations. Politicians in their pockets sneering at the unemployed, smugly stating that $600 dollars a week will make the recipients lazy. Like billions in government bailouts don’t make CEOs lazy.

Crony capitalism is the antithesis of competition. The news dwells disapprovingly on the craven con men, parsing nonsensical pronouncements from on high while seldom mentioning the struggles and triumphs of populations without lobbyists. To fight, we must run with the Big Dogs and trip them when we can. The Big Dogs cheat.

TREND FOUR: Emboldening of hate-based -isms.

Hostility by proxy, electronic texts typed by pundits and nobodies deliver messages of venom and bitter jealousy. Words spit out by the vitriol-spewing former reality show stars whose towering destructive anger has their minions cowering in fear of retribution. Traitors who blithely accept this disgusting behavior suffer no consequences. The toppling of Confederate monuments, the dismantling of protections for rogue cops, support for the peace-keepers, and the renaming of military bases and towns, these are constructive destruction. The long-delayed reckonings form a thin layer above magma-level rage. We should not kow-tow to the unreasoning fear of people stepping outside of strict gender roles. The Egyptian goddess Isis, the goddesses Khali and Pele, they symbolize both creation and destruction. Our pagan forebears understood they go hand in hand. Perhaps those who run, hurling insults and invective as they flee, perhaps they glimpsed the red-hot edges, not completely hidden, of a roiling anger lighting torches for a Sherman’s March through a Narcissistic Landscape.

De-humanizing other humans by calling them Illegals or Aliens or Animals, the terrorists mock victims of actual racism and embrace oppression of everybody but the angry white boys that they are. We see you. We are turning on the lights in the bathrooms in the tropical climates, and watching the cockroaches skitter. Thing is, the palmetto bugs are always there, they are in the walls, under the floors. As ugly as they are, we see them now, time to stop pretending the House is not infested with haters.

TREND FIVE: The new meaning of masks

Are we now putting on masks over masks? Without the best cosmetics showing off our makeover skills, is the playing field levelled in an unintended way? Will all of it get wiped off on the inside of our masks, where only our lovers can see what’s underneath? How do we show that we are smiling? Voices are muffled, making the baseless screaming of the overprivileged echo in the abysmal abyss. The haters are easy to find, taking selfies with the scenes of their crimes. Reading scripts inside our homes, we don more unisex clothing. Now it’s hoodies and polo shirts and sometimes even denim, whereas before it was Suit and Tie, button down long sleeved shirt, socks and shiny shoes. Always the Suit and Tie, Suit and Tie. Just once gentlemen, break the damn code — wear a puffy shirt, cargo pants, flamboyant makeup and jewelry — anything to show you understand how restricting those dress codes truly are. Underneath that thin veneer of “showing respect by dressing in a suit” you must realize it perpetrates stereotypes, right? That “dress code” doesn’t really apply to both men and women does it? Yet the outright persecution of cross-dressing queens and transgender humans continues apace. What the hell did they ever do to the Boogaloo Boys? And hey, take off those Hawaiian shirts and put down those tiki torches — you’re making your mama ashamed. How does a transgender person taking a poop harm your precious perceptions? I mean, is your pecker so small that gender roles must be shriveled as well? Put on a nice summer dress, boys, and feel free to browse the cosmetics aisles — sequins all around! The Patriarchy is not working out for anyone.

HINDSIGHT

How do we pull back from here, this nonsensical precipice at the end of the world? Rocket boost ourselves to some other planet? Give up fossil fuels? Staying home has rendered the most polluted cities breathable again. Lockdowns have made us all re-consider our head long-rush into material wealth, or at least forced us to slow down, contemplate the start of the War on Wars. How about a Peace Pentagon, Camp David accord for Forests? At the very least, we must re-consider how jingoistic our rhetoric is, and bend towards peace.

2020, you were a locomotive, truly loco, at top speed, heedless and careless. Every person, every place, every thing was standing in harm’s way. When the world re-opens, will we see? Will we reach “across the aisle”? Will we ever share a table with the willfully ignorant or sit next to maskless enablers? Let us resolutely put one foot in front of the other and side step the backwards slide to authoritarianism. Maybe it’s not so terrible a fate to re-consider what’s important, to look inside, like our great grandparents did. Find the emotional strength to keep on going, and then to remember it’s always been there, a gift from our ancestors; they survived worse, or we wouldn’t be here.