2020 was not the worst year in history. Hard to believe, but it’s true.
Even with a pandemic and social unrest and an unhinged President and Twitter, the overwhelming majority of us still have a quality of life that our ancestors could only dream about. And, as I’ve noted before, people always seem to believe that the times they’re living through are the worst ever.
Richard Chin, of the Minneapolis StarTribune, examines some other years that make 2020 seem like a golden age:
As much as we might complain that 2020 is really the worst year, in the long scheme of human suffering over the ages, we ain’t seen nothing.
The roll call of awful annums should also include 1968, according to Bill Convery, director of research for the Minnesota Historical Society.
That was the year that we were rocked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the year of the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre and nearly 50 American soldiers dying every day in Vietnam. It was also the year when urban unrest over poverty, racial discrimination, police brutality and another bitter and chaotic presidential election led to protests and rioting in dozens of American cities. When Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush burgeoning liberal reforms. When another virus, the H3N2 “Hong Kong flu,” would kill a million people worldwide.
“Those were rough times,” Convery said. “It stands out in living memory as a terrible year.”
Or consider 1942, in the depths of a world war that was killing millions. That was the year of the Bataan death march, the deadliest months of the Holocaust and the beginning of the battle of Stalingrad.
Or imagine living through 1932, with the Dust Bowl, rampant homelessness and hunger marches amid the Great Depression.
Or 1919, with a deadly flu pandemic, anarchist bombings and widespread racial violence in the U.S. during a postwar recession.
Or 1862. Or 1863. Or 1864.
“Pick any year of the Civil War,” Convery said. “Each year saw some of the deadliest battles that Americans ever participated in.”
Other nominees for a dumpster fire Christmas tree ornament might be 1492 (a disaster for the Indigenous population of the New World), 1348 (the Black Death), 536 (global cold, darkness and crop failures thanks to ash from a massive volcanic eruption), or sometime about 66 million years ago when a mighty big asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula, wiping out the dinosaurs and about three-fourths of all life on Earth.
I’d also throw in 1979, the year of an oil shock, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” hitting number one.
2020 was still really freaking horrible, though. As Chin notes, decades of progress in combating global poverty came to a screeching halt because of the pandemic:
“If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be — what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you’d be born into — you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. You’d choose right now,” Obama told the graduating class of Howard University in 2016.
“You’d certainly pick this decade,” [Steven] Pinker said.
But “not this year — COVID will bring setbacks in poverty and life expectancy,” he added.
That’s a view confirmed by the Goalkeepers Report, an initiative by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to track and encourage global progress.
In its September 2020 report, the organization stated that after decades of worldwide declines in poverty and disease, “This progress has now stopped.”
COVID-19 and a world recession have halted improvements in a host of global developments, such as reducing child mortality, decreasing HIV cases and improving sanitation, according to the organization.
“This year, on the vast majority [of goals], we’ve regressed,” the Goalkeepers Report said.
Even the murder rate in the United States increased in 2020, after decades of steady decline. (Vox lists several possible reasons, including the fact that hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19 weren’t able to save some shooting victims who might otherwise have survived.) Authoritarian states like China and Russia appear stronger and more established than ever.
The current President of the United States is still in office until January 20, 2021, and still using his Twitter feed to spread baseless conspiracy theories. (He hasn’t found time to tweet his condolences about an incoming Congressman from his own party dying of COVID-19, though.)
Worst of all, the pandemic has claimed the lives of almost 1.8 million people around the world, including over 15,000 Canadians and a staggering 346,000 Americans, kept millions of people separated from their families and loved ones.
Personally, I was one of the luckier ones in 2020. I’m able to work from home, and more importantly, I didn’t lose anyone to the coronavirus. I started this newsletter and found a receptive audience. And the lockdowns didn’t affect my social life, because I never had one to begin with.
Aside from the eye condition I mentioned the other day, it was mostly vacation plans messed up for me: I had booked a trip to England for the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a longtime bucket-list item, only to have it cancelled. And then I booked a plane ticket home to Newfoundland for Christmas and had to cancel that, too. At least I have lots of airline vouchers I can use in 2021, assuming we get back to normal so quickly (and assuming the airlines don’t go out of business).
What more can you say about 2020, except that this was one of the highlights of the year:
If for some reason you want to further revisit this wretched year - not my place to judge, but geez - here are some 2020-in-review pieces, from Dave Barry…
…In Washington, D.C., large crowds gather in front of the White House. President Trump, angered by reports that at one point he retreated to an underground bunker, states that in fact he was merely inspecting the bunker, this being a responsibility explicitly assigned to the president by the Constitution, right after where it says he’s in charge of foreign policy.
To demonstrate that he is not the kind of leader who hides in bunkers, the president courageously goes outside (after the protesters have been cleared away) and personally walks several hundred feet to historic St. John’s Church, where he holds up a Bible. Or possibly it is a thesaurus. The important thing is that it is a serious-looking book and a strong visual, at a time when what this wounded and divided nation needs, more than ever, is strong visuals.
For their part, the Democrats, fed up with the long-standing pattern of systemic racism and police misconduct in major U.S. cities, vow to bring about real reform, just as soon as they can figure out who, exactly, is in charge of these cities. One much-discussed reform proposal is defunding the police, which is clearly defined by its proponents as “taking the funding away from the police” as well as “not taking the funding away from the police.”
…and David Thompson:
We learned in July, via the medium of loud screeching, that when you’re bouncing a friend’s young nephew on your lap, you’re not in fact being affectionate or delighting in babyness, but are actually “exhibiting [your] power over people of colour,” and therefore require immediate “anti-racism training.” Not to be outdone, New York Times contributor David Kaufman demonstrated his own ability to detect racism at the subatomic scale by declaring himself oppressed by pedestrian-crossing traffic lights.
Politico has the worst predictions of the last twelve months, Todd in the Shadows released his Worst Songs of 2020 video early, and Jeff Jacoby looks for some silver linings in the dark cloud that was this past year.
See you in 2021. Hopefully it will be better from here on out.
I try to read your posts and happily read this one closely.
Your comments about other tough years hit home. I was in eighth grade in 1968 which was such a tough year in so many ways. Assassins killing good men and young soldiers dying daily in Vietnam. The year ended though with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Andrea sending a message of hope from the dark side of the moon.
1979 was also a tough year for me personally. My dad died unexpected at 51 and we buried him on New Year’s Eve.
I look at the pictures of the earthrise shared by the Apollo 8 crew and can’t feel anything but optimistic about the new year.
Thank you for your good writing and happy new year.
2020 wasn’t all bad. It’s the year I started reading your blog, after all. ;)) (indeed...it’s already a few days more than a year now.) :-^))
I also started a substack about my explorations of cooking, which will never go anywhere but is both fun and, simply by the process of writing my own thoughts on a regular basis, sharpening my mental skills for what I really want to do: Achieve my freedom (at this time in my life, I am truly ready for that, and reading you has a lot to do with the self-discovery which made it possible), have friends (quality over quantity), and go to school.
It goes to show how one good person who cares deeply about others can make a greater difference than they may know.
Personally I think that social lives are often shallow and superficial, based more on being in the same herd than actually sharing anything. The nice thing about being online is that it enables a person to connect to the very few others with whom one shares something actually meaningful - knowing what really matters in life (kids, unselfish love, family), caring about others even though they probably think one’s weird, and trying to be a better person. Along with having fun and enjoying the good moments in life, knowing their true worth.
And let’s not forget: fast cars and ice cream cake. ;)
Thank you for being here :)) Happy 2021!!!