2020: End Of Year Thoughts.

Well, I’d say 2020 was certainly a year to remember.

What words could I use?

•  COVID-19?
•  Economic Collapse?
•  Systemic institutionalized racism finally exposed?
•  Another fixed election?
•  Working like a dog to no end?
•  Dreams on hold?

I mean there are so many aspects of this year that will forever differentiate this year from others previous, as well as the ones to come.

COVID-19

Well let’s face it. More than probably anything, if I had to sum up 2020 in one word – it would be COVID-19.

How many deaths in the US alone - 337,419 at last count? And no end in site to the rate of increase in infection, spread, variants, etc.? Oh sure, there’s talk of a vaccine, and even more talk of reopening the economy (like this stupid suggestion from the right-wing.). But let’s face it – with people in lockdown and the risk of further suffering and tragedy still upon us, is venturing out in public a good idea?

Not for me. Frankly I along with my family are lucky more than anything else that we haven’t gotten it.

You can look up the stats – the number of people laid off, the number of foreclosures, evictions, loss of health coverage, loss of homes, broken families and broken lives, which only lead to violence, tragedy, and sadness for many. I always remind my children (as well as myself) that if they think their life is so bad, all they need to do is walk down the road a few blocks. Truly bad lives aren’t that hard to find.

Economic Collapse

But let’s face it. Even without the Corona Pandemic upon us, 2020 would’ve been a bad year all around for the vast majority of working people.

Think I’m kidding you? Listen or read this -> https://youtu.be/sXYvFk9I9hY. Or this -> https://youtu.be/kMIho9ah9wc

All of what happened related to the pandemic may not have been the fault of the economic system known as Capitalism, but clearly said system was neither prepared for what was to come, nor could it deal with effects on people while it occurred. It’s as if The Sickness Is The System.

Which by the way, is the title of a book I got from the author above, and will be reading intently over the next few weeks.

The bottom line for me is, one doesn’t have to be an Economics Professor to observe around one self to see all the signs that society has reached the late-stage of the late-stage of Capitalism. I call this ‘crapitalism’.

For me that means I should save up as much as possible and prepare for something truly worse than in 2020. I will have to check back at the end of 2021 to see if this was just paranoia, or something more.

And did said system react to helping people? Well they gave $5 Trillion USD to the largely and most powerful, while leaving everyone else a paltry $1200 check.  That tells you really all about the priorities like, and for whom they do not. This country is on the road to Fascism.

Systemic institutionalized racism finally exposed

Racism and sexism was certainly on my mind in 2020. The evidence of brutal police violence along with the rise of ‘Karens’ both are laced with racism that are a result of both white supremacy and white privilege.

Don’t let the stats fool you (https://killedbypolice.net/) even though the official numbers went down, just looking at how many more people getting killed by police end up being caught and uploaded to the Internet.  The sheer brutality and racism is one thing. The lack of accountability and justice for those whose lives were taken is another; and is - in large part - what drove the protests we saw in 2020. It’s what sparks the Black Lives Matter and Defund The Police movements – two of which I strongly support.

As long as there is no justice, there can never be any real peace.

Then there’s the Karens.

Unlike police brutality which is based on the historical white supremacy of slave patrols, Karens I think are largely a function of white privilege. You see it in so many videos now. Just go to YouTube and search.

But largely missing from a lot of these is the obvious both racism and misandry that exists in such individuals. They take advantage of both there race AND their gender to impose their will on those who are neither them. One need only review the infamous clip in Central Park. That women was using both her race and her gender to endanger the man’s life with her false claim, and all to avoid the fact that it was she who was wrong. It’s the reason why channels like ‘Karens In the Wild’ are so popular now. Sure on some level many of these individuals can harmless. But let’s never forget that many of them are not, by ANY stretch.

Another fixed election

And then yes, what about the 2020 US Presidential Elections? Well one can’t really talk about elections without first recognizing that there aren’t really two ‘choices’ when it comes to our elections. ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’ are really just two brands of the establishment, like two different shampoos from the same manufacturer; one for dry hair, one for oily hair. Looking at one of the brands, it seems as though 2020 was a repeat of 2016. More primaries fixed in favor of the establishment candidate (Joe Biden being Plan B, after Pete Buttigieg’s cheating in Iowa made him a non-choice) over Bernie Sanders. And of course, Sanders went right along with it.

Did Joe Biden really beat Donald Trump? Supposedly the numbers say so, but as we’ve seen, numbers can be fixed or altered. What I expect is that I don’t see Biden lasting much more than a year, and that a person who didn’t garner a single Democratic Party Delegate will take over running this country further into the ground for the establishment’s drive to fascism.

Working like a dog to no end

I would say that I was also fortunate in that I work for an employer and an industry that allows for me to do my job at home remotely. As a retail company, things could’ve gone really badly in that regard (as it has for many retail companies), but due to some technological innovations and relatively cautious business leadership, my employer not only survived the initial economic catastrophe, but managed to even turn a profit.

But I’m under no illusion that this was all a good thing for me.

While the vast majority of folks in my field (IT) were able to prove they can do their jobs while at home, it did underscore a few unpleasant realities in order to make it happen.

Essentially working from home means a ‘pay-to-play’ game for those who want to continue to be employed and work remotely. It means paying for one’s own Internet connectivity to continue working.

Amazing how that worked out for my employer? We as employees must be thankful and relieved to be working in such an unprecedented environment, but the truth is, it is the employees who are paying out.

Not to mention that shitty connectivity means shitty productivity. This becomes even more evident when you have two teenagers doing schoolwork online, plus a toddler getting terrible content delivered unwittingly via large multimedia corporations.

Any talk of being compensated for the Internet use by one’s employer when notoriously silent almost as quickly as when the directive was given to work from home.

But that aside, there was also the expected, but unstated assumption given at work, that being remote meant that one was supposed to be online and at the company’s call pretty much all the time. Think I’m kidding? I worked more evenings and weekends in the last 10 months, that I have in the 1st 9+ years I’ve been with this company. Think that is not a coincidence?

Should I be complaining? Am I?

One could argue that I really should be thankful that I can work, I can work remotely, and that I can work remotely and do my job successfully. And on some level, I am. I am certainly thankful for the fact that I’m pretty well compensated for the role I do.

But it’s also a stark reminder that information technology breed s and cultivates the kinds of horrible aspects of human personalities that I’ve grown to despise: Narcissism, Sociopaths, Psychopaths, Passive-Aggressiveness, Microaggression, Micro-management, etc. I’ve seen all of those come to light at heightened levels in 2020. I’ve seen such personality traits in people in authority in IT in my fairly long career, but it was this year in particular where I saw all of these traits magnified and intensified due to being remote and reliant on technology. I expect this to only continue and honestly get worse in the New Year.

It’s also a(nother) reminder that I really need to be doing something else in life in general. IT is just a job; a responsibility; something that pays the bills and so on. I’m good (enough) to survive and even thrive, but that doesn’t mean I like it. I already think I’ve been in it too long as it is. The thing about that is, yes, I could continue and dedicate myself such that I can work to the next level and really truly manage people’s careers along with teams, process and work. But I don’t want to go any further. I don’t really want the added responsibilities and loss of further time, energy, and focus; taken from the rest of my life.

Working such intense and full days as I have this year has also had the unintended side-effects of being excessively tired and unengaged in pretty much anything else outside of work. I can only speculate this will do to my health; both in the short- and long-term.

But all in all, I know that I truly have been fortunate. I can complain because of all of that. I cannot say the same of many others around me.

Dreams on Hold

Yes – COVID-19 put my band on hold. We start the New Year having not played a single show in 2020. On top of that, we lost our bass player. But on the upside, I’ve written a number of songs, and many more to come. On that note, I also failed to complete writing another one of my own rock albums, but oddly enough I’m not feeling to bad about that. Part of the reason is, I’m finally going to get a top-notch song-recording aid to help with producing instrumental tracks for songs. There will be a learning curve with the new tool, but once there, I hope to actually start producing near-finished recordings of my back-catalog such that they can be released. We’ll see how that goes.