Happy New Year: 10 Takeaways and a Comeback

On death, deck chairs, and the falling rain.

The image above is a tech-facilitated collaboration between thousands of artists and me.

I have dozens of takeaways from the year that just ended, but in the interests of brevity I’ll only list ten of them here. Then, a comeback and some closing thoughts.

Takeaway #1: Some billionaires turned out to be frauds. Why was that such big news? It would be bigger news if they found one who wasn’t.

Takeaway #2: More than one million Americans died in a pandemic (so far), and it’s being treated in politics and the media as if it’s no big deal. Sure, it gets mentioned, but that’s about it. Is it just me or is that truly bizarre?

Takeaway #3: The pandemic is just one reason why the average American lifespan got shorter again this year. Lifespans were getting shorter even before the pandemic. That doesn’t seem to upset the people in charge much, either. After all, the people in their circles are living as long as ever.

The takeaway? Some people are more expendable than others. It must be that “just in time” management we’ve heard so much about, where you don’t store any more of your raw materials than you think you’ll you need.

Don’t think of it as death; think of it as inventory reduction.

Takeaway #4: We are now engaged in a two-pronged nuclear arms race. Russia and Ukraine are making most of the headlines, but the bipartisan consensus has decided to treat China as an existential threat. The reasons for that are unclear.

Takeaway: If the government was going to make China the enemy, I wish they’d done it before sending more than a million manufacturing jobs there. (And before Big Pharma decided to manufacture lifesaving drugs there.)

Takeaway #5: Speaking of China, we’ve been cheering on protestors who object to that government’s anti-Covid measures. Granted, they’ve been far stricter than they ever were in this country. Still, it’s odd to see American elites cheering on anti-mandate demonstrations in China while heaping calumny on them in North America.

The takeaway is that beneath the seemingly rock-solid moral clarity of the governing class – i.e., “we believe in science” – lies a soft, muddy bog of cynicism. The main difference between a Toronto truckers’ protest and a Shanghai street hassle seems to lie in the geopolitics, not the science.

And, to be clear, I believe strongly in the right to protest and in free expression. Which brings us to

Takeaway #6: Whether you’re on the left or right, apparently it’s okay to censor free speech on social media and everywhere else if it promotes ideas you don’t like. (That was also a takeaway from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.)

People like to mention the popular quote that “you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater” when this subject comes up. But what if there really is a fire? Who decides who speaks and who doesn’t?

Takeaway #7: The January 6th committee has concluded that the violence that day was the work of one man. That absolves the entire Republican Party, most of which was complicit in Trump’s behavior.  (The committee’s best TV movement showed Sen. Josh Hawley firing up the crowd, then skedaddling Road Runner-style from the chaos. Did they forget that?)

Staffers did some good research for that committee, but the implications of what they found were either dismissed or played down.  The “single bullshitter” theory (my variation on the “single bullet theory”) also absolved the Democratic Party for its inaction after the Wall Street financial riot of 2008, when it failed to punish the malefactors. That act of indulgence helped pave the way for the fury that followed.

The takeaway? Damage control is still Washington’s only real principle.

Takeaway #8: The next one’s simple: People love unions and unions get things done. Organize, organize, organize. Few things are more beautiful than the sight of strikers marching in the cold December rain.

Takeaway #9: The Federal Reserve has been crushing working people economically as a response to inflation, even though workers’ wages are not causing it. Corporate profit-taking is the biggest inflationary driver, but the government will do nothing about that. Do you have any questions about this economic system and who it’s designed to serve?

The takeaway: Of course you don’t.

Takeaway #10: Vote, but don’t kid yourself.  Despite what the cliché says, it’s not immoral to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. You could give a sick person a seat, for example, or move people away from the crashing waves. But the real goal is to save people’s lives, not just make them a little less uncomfortable as the catastrophe unfolds. That means getting them on the lifeboats — or, better yet, steering the boat away from the iceberg before a collision becomes unavoidable.

We have to save ourselves. That means taking the helm, not just hoping for a smarter captain next time.

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People often use the New Year to look back on who we lost in the past year, but I won’t do that. For those I loved, whether from near or far, I’ll just repeat W.S. Merwin’s words:

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

As for the comeback I mentioned earlier – well, that’s me. “Comeback” may be too grandiose a word, I guess, but this newsletter has been moribund for a few weeks while I dealt with some health problems. Things are improving now. So, I’ll tell you what. If you don’t give up on 2023, I won’t either.

Merwin, again:

come back
believer in shade
believer in silence and elegance
believer in ferns
believer in patience
believer in the rain

Do we have a deal? If so, let’s meet on the barricades this year like we used to.