2020: When a Janus-Faced America Reared Its Ugly Head
Putting it lightly, the past year has been a milieu of outbreaks — those of infectious illness and those which decried social and political agendas. It’s a blunt statement, but it does not require much elaboration. We have all lived through it.
We have experienced the hypocrisy of inconsistent mask-wearing mandates — across stores, offices, and institutions with varying procedures and, seemingly, varying levels of concern. As the year progressed, we moved through a gradation of confronting COVID-19 and then producing what counterattacks we could.
Awareness led to response and response to prevention. Even so, the tallies of confirmed coronavirus cases and associated deaths have continued to fluctuate, as has the mood of the country.
The protests, the establishment and fall of CHAZ in Seattle, the vehemently opposing political views regarding the election: all showcase what America has morphed into. We have become a population of maximalists who have gone so far as to refuse to listen to ideas and opinions from viewpoints that differ from our own.
The thesis of Jonathan Freedland’s Guardian column, that 2020 merely accentuated the tendencies (polarization not least among them) that were lurking beneath the surface of society, is one which hardly leaves room for opposition.
