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I think most people would agree: 2020 was a terrible year. Between the Coronavirus pandemic, 351,000 dead Americans, quarantines, lockdowns at home, protests and riots in numerous cities, civil unrest, civil injustice, racism, wanton murder of minorities, the economy, and vast political schisms between Americans affecting everything we say and do… well, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and to want it to all be over, one way or another.
I think many of us thought and hoped that 2021 would be a better year. Maybe it was starting better, but then civil unrest became a civil insurrection as a massive crowd of Trump supporters carrying a variety of flags and slogans stormed the US Capitol Building to interrupt the Electoral College on Wednesday, January 6th. Within a day, our President and political parties tried recasting it as “Antifa”, terrorists, “not us”, but it was President Trump who addressed the crowd personally and on giant monitors before the crowd rushed the Capitol building. They were being praised as “patriots” before they were re-cast as insurrectionists and terrorists. I am sure if they were successful in interrupting, postponing, or overturning the Electoral College, they would have been highly praised as “patriots” by President Trump and his supporters.
Unfortunately, I was there in Washington, DC, when it happened. I wasn’t there because I wanted to watch or participate in the protests. I was there because Kaiser-Permanente of Capitol Hill is on 2nd Street, just two blocks away from Union Station and Columbus Circle. Vicky and I were driving through DC at 6:30 AM in the morning when the crowds had already gathered and stood about on the streets, blocking traffic while the police did nothing to enforce vehicular right-of-way. I spent a couple of hours getting IV radioisotopes and lying in a GE Optima PET/CT scanner as the radiologist did a long, slow pass from my sinuses to my knees. By 10:30, when we were able to leave, the crowds had already grown substantially and a number of politicians from Rudy Gulliani to Donald Trump were addressing the crowd. Vicky and I just wanted to get away from there, to escape the crowds and the protests, and to go home.
We left the news off for most of the day, but heard about the storming of the Congressional Building by 5:30 that evening. We were both dismayed, wondering what we would awake to in the morning.
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And so begins 2021. Given the terror and unrest of January 6th, I have very little hope for a peaceful transition of power on Inauguration Day (Wednesday, January 20th, 2021). I think President Trump and his supporters will do everything within the power to be noisy, disruptive, and disrespectful. I hope that I’m wrong and that I look back on this blog entry as completely mistaken, but nothing so far shows reasonable people, common courtesy, or basic respect.
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But it’s still the first two weeks of 2021, despite all that has happened. It’s a new year. Soon we’ll have a new President. Hopefully the Coronavirus vaccines will get better distributed and disseminated to everyone. I keep hoping and praying that it’ll get better.
It must, right?