[A cartoon by Adam Douglas Thompson (The New Yorker via Twitter)]
In the U.S., the holidays can be a profoundly disorienting time, perhaps because so many converges during a few short weeks. Our roles as family members, consumers and religious adherents all get tested starting with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Hanukkah, Christmas, and a few others all stacked at year's end, not to mention the impending launch of a new year.
Furthermore, in this year of the plague, every emotion feels heightened by the isolation and the strangeness surrounding us.
For me, New Year's is the holiday that evokes the most intense feelings, as I strive to review the past year, wipe the slate clean, and embark on the next one.
If we are all acting in our own movies, as I suspect we are, the three acts of 2020 have pretty much exhausted themselves and we are limping toward the climax. But what will that be?
Just think about the political reality of this moment. Some two-thirds of the electorate turned out to vote in the presidential election. They were mainly energized by the incumbent, whether you're for him or against him. He is without debate one of the major populist figures in American history, deeply divisive in ways that go well beyond any ideological differences that may exist.
In some ways, he represents the countryside, sparsely populated, under-educated, poor, religious and mainly white against the cities, which are massive, diverse, rich, agnostic and where the doctrines and story lines of our movies (good and evil) are controlled and distributed.
And whether Trump himself chooses to run for president again in the future or not, his outsized influence over the countryside will persist. We have in no way seen the last of his brand of populism.
So much for the political leitmotif in our movie. Consider the economic. The yawning divide between the haves and the have-nots is rapidly mutating into the "have-too-much" segment (small) and the "feel-left-out" segment (large).
This fault line splits the cities internally every bit as much as the country as a whole. Mansions sit next to slums and nowhere is that more evident than here in the Bay Area.
Silicon Valley billionaires own fabulous homes with security guards while the homeless encampments in neighborhoods like West Oakland rival anything you'll see in a Third World country. Block after block of tents and rusting RVs line the streets, punctuated by endless blocks of dumping grounds with piles of trash so huge that they rival the Indian burial mounds that are located nearby.
The yawning political and economic divides are splitting along generational lines too, as I've argued, with the highest burden falling on younger Millennials and Get-Z. Please just listen to Great Thunberg!
Everything converges around the existential threat of climate change. As the virus bedeviling us mutates and sheds itself even before we feel its symptoms and can seek treatment, we continue to evolve biologically much too slowly to compete with it. We'll be forced, IMHO, to utilize genetic engineering for the species to survive going forward, with forcible mutations that allow us to adapt more quickly to a radically changing earth.
The coming hierarchy will be defined by who makes those decisions and which human traits endure, as the others are discarded much like that trash on the streets of West Oakland.
Because of all of these factors, we may be the last generation of traditional humans, shaped by geologically determined forces, and viscerally by our choices through sexual attraction and reproduction.
Each pandemic weakens our collective immune system so much that the dystopian nightmare I I describe is most certainly the only way our descendants will survive.
That's a heavy load to carry from 2020 onward.
How do we cope? In the little ways. We can't change our fate. Make a drawing for a friend, find a book for someone, make that phone call you've been hesitating to make, tell that story, sit out in the sun or squeeze your nose to the window in a snowstorm, sing a Christmas carol, even off-tune, pray, hug those you live with, breathe the air free of smoke, listen to some favorite music, bake Christmas cookies for a neighbor, by all means say "I love you" and consider the myths that have come down through the ages.
Most critical of all, connect! Do not decouple from humanity. Don't drink to excess. Isolation is only a state of mind when you when you decide to fight it. Don't let it win. Yes the storm clouds are dark but maybe, just maybe there yet will be a silver lining.
***
And add to your list of Christmas movies if you've not seen it (or even if you have) "Silver Linings Playbook" with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Robert De Niro plays a supporting role.
The film takes head on modern family life, mental illness, improbable connections and romantic love. Since it is Hollywood, there has to be a silver lining. The final scenes with the incomparable Jennifer Lawrence, scored, lit and angled to perfection, preach that hope, indeed, still can conquer our loneliness.
The news marches on, there's hope there too if you look for it...
* Biden Picks Deb Haaland to Lead Interior Department -- The historic choice would elevate a Native American to a cabinet secretary position for the first time, and do so at an agency that played a central role in the nation’s long-running abuse of native peoples.
* With historic picks at interior and EPA, Biden puts environmental justice front and center (WashPo)
* California, now the U.S. pandemic epicenter, is nearing zero capacity in its intensive care units as COVID-19 cases continue to surge. As of yesterday, there was just 3% ICU capacity statewide. Southern California was completely full. [HuffPost]
* More Hacking Attacks Found as Officials Warn of ‘Grave Risk’ to U.S. Government (Trump has been silent on the hacking). (NYT)
* The nation’s cybersecurity agency warned of a “grave” risk to government and private networks from an intrusion carried out by suspected Russian hackers. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that the intrusion had compromised federal agencies as well as “critical infrastructure” in a sophisticated attack that was hard to detect and will be difficult to undo. Sen. Mitt Romney said that it is "extraordinary" that President Donald Trump has said nothing about the attack. [AP]
* Cyber technology shares soar as security attacks pile up (Reuters)
*Suspected Russian hackers accessed the systems of a U.S. internet provider and a county government in Arizona as part of a sprawling cyber-espionage campaign disclosed this week, web records show. (Reuters)
* Earlier this week, a photo of Georgia GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler posing alongside Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance who went to prison in the 1990s for assaulting a Black man, went viral. Her campaign disavowed it. But HuffPost has been sent another photo of Loeffler posing with Joshua Mote, Lumpkin County coordinator for a Georgia extremist group led by Doles. And in August, Loeffler sat down for an interview with Jack Posobiec, a neo-Nazi collaborator and prominent MAGA propagandist. [HuffPost]
* The nation’s political divisions are rooted in geographic divisions, a trend that is clearly revealed by the changing party control of seats in the House of Representatives. (WSJ)
* Trump has invoked the Georgia Senate runoffs many times over the past month raising money for his $100 million-plus “leadership” political committee — but has not reported spending a dime on those races. “It would suggest that the PAC is blatantly lying to its supporters to raise money that President Trump could use for his own personal benefit,” said Robert Maguire, a campaign finance expert. [HuffPost]
* As Singapore Ventures Back Out, Migrant Workers Are Kept In -- The low-wage workers, almost half of whom have contracted the coronavirus, continue to be mostly confined to dormitories even as the city-state eases restrictions (NYT)
* South Africa identifies new coronavirus strain causing surge in cases (Reuters)
* COVID-19 Is Now Leading Killer In 5 Latin American Nations (NPR)
* Night trains halted for New Year's Eve in Tokyo (NHK)
* Iran has begun construction on a site at its underground nuclear facility at Fordo amid tensions with the U.S. over its atomic program, according to satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press on Friday. (AP)
* An Agonizing Wait After Nigeria Abductions, Then a Flood of Relief -- The seizure of more than 300 boys brought immediate comparisons to the 2014 kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls. But an anguishing six days later, a state governor said the boys had been released. (NYT)
* A judge in San Diego ruled that two strip clubs could remain open, a decision that extends to restaurants and will allow them to reopen to some extent. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]
* Falling Behind on Weekly Rent and Afraid of Being Evicted -- Residents of weekly rentals worry they will be kicked out if they can’t pay the rent. It’s unclear if the federal moratorium on evictions applies to them. (NYT)
* Lake Tahoe is cracking down on short-term rentals, but officials can’t stop visitors from coming. [SFGATE]
* College students recruited as teachers to keep schools open (AP)
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