How It Began, and How It Ends

Ominous Year Passing and Coming

This year began ominously.  The Covid pandemic, still with us as 600+ Americans continue to die daily, was far more seriously surging as the year began.  International tensions were growing and soon exploded in Ukraine.  “Politics” in Washington was in many ways dysfunctional, even paralyzed, on the big issues.  The Administration in power controlling both the White House and the Congress reduced itself as the year went on to marginal limited fixes for which it then falsely claimed great victories.  The packing of the Supreme Court, as well as District and Appeals Courts, with “conservative”, ideological, and right-wing Christian Theocratic judges had dire results with more to come.

The climate crisis got even worse with no serious prospects anymore of the U.S. leading the world community in any way to control or even to keep it at manageable levels.  The COP27 gathering that never should have been held in the military dictatorship and gross human rights-abusing Egypt failed, though one would never know it from the mainstream media coverage.  Special note should be taken that even the U.N. Secretary-General has taken this year to use the term, “doomed”.

And, yes, the “dangerous” Donald Trump, who did more to set the current course in motion than any other single person, remained throughout most of the year out-of-control and in the headlines, preparing for a “comeback” as both the January 6th Select Committee and the Department of Justice plodded along much too slowly.  By year’s end, the Justice Department had finally appointed a special counsel, and the January 6th Committee had finally issued its report with “criminal referrals” for Trump and others, though nearly two years after the attempted and nearly successful coup.  Yet, the one important recommendation that I and the World Mental Health Coalition have been urging for years was totally left out—even though what we recommended going back to 2017 could well have avoided so much death and violence, including the January 6th insurrection.

As this year ends, an even more ominous one is about to begin.  The pandemic is now exploding in the largest country in the world, and virologists fear a new variant may emerge that could be much more vaccine-resistant and deadly.  International war is literally being prepared around the globe from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, with escalating efforts to rush the building of more and newer weapons of mass destruction.  Indeed, much of the world seems to be on a collision course in multiple locations all at the same time: Ukraine and now Serbia, Korea and Taiwan, Kashmir, Israel and Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, with the big target Iran in the cross-hairs.  Unprecedented tensions and war preparation among the Great Powers are pregnant with potential disaster, even Armageddon, as never before.

Worldwide extreme poverty, terrible famine and hunger, increasing social violence, and resulting from all growing migration crises, including on the southern American border.  The U.S. has further escalated dropping ever larger economic bombs far and wide, causing tremendous social misery, bitterness, and loathing, as well as further fueling global war preparations.  Widespread talk of World War III and use of nuclear weapons is now not only commonplace but too possible to be acceptable.

“Politics” in Washington is about to degenerate seriously even further while the great systemic problems of America are being left largely unaddressed, including major drug and mental health epidemics, as political gridlock and ideological intransigence dominate.  Donald Trump is on course finally to be indicted in the New Year, possibly on multiple counts; but he will likely further manipulate the system to subvert and to drag out legal proceedings as he endeavors to twist things in ways that could result in street civil war and even catapult him or a like-minded protégé into the White House, possibly with a far-right radical Congress to match….

Why are we mentioning all this?  It is because these trends are not random, and we must name the problem in order to solve it.  In naming the problem, we are more than halfway to solving it.

Every day that the indictments are expedited means that “Trumpism” will not have a chance to spread further, making criminality, mendacity, and sedition less of an acceptable strategy for doing politics.  Just as we now know that, at the onset of the Covid pandemic, every hour that Donald Trump went on national television translated into more destruction and death from the virus, every reduction in hours of public exposure matters.  We can no longer neglect the collective psychological shift that occurs with each step we take, or not.  When the shift happens in a healthy direction, all the rest will fall into place. Our nation needs a respite and a chance to recover.  In the New Year, let our leaders show a little willingness.