2020: America’s wake-up call
Who could have predicted how dreadful a year 2020 would be.
By this 1ew ear’s (ve, 19 million to 20 million Americans will have contracted a deadly virus in a pandemic that e ploded out of China to carry off 333,000 Americans, one of every 1,000 of us.
As 2021 begins, Americans will be dying at the rate of 10,000 a week and contracting the virus at a rate of more than 1 million new cases a week.
et, during that same year, miracles occurred. 9accines were created, tested and mass-produced by Pfizer and 0oderna that could, with 95% effectiveness, stop this virus cold.
If Americans can reach herd immunity – – from having caught and survived the virus or having been vaccinated against it – – the CO9I -19 pandemic might be contained by the summer of 2021.
(conomically, the pandemic caused the worst crash since the reat epression with scores of thousands of schools closed and empty, and scores of thousands of stores, bars and restaurants shuttered, many never to open again.
et, in the same year, the ow Jones Industrial Average broke every record, crossing the 30,000 mark, again and again, with the 1AS A4 and S P 500 reaching new highs.
7hus, as tens of millions of Americans saw their savings wiped out and had trouble making rent payments and feeding their families, some investors saw their stock portfolios surge. es, 9irginia, there are two Americas.
On 0emorial ay weekend, a white police officer in 0inneapolis was taped kneeling for nine minutes on the neck of a Black suspect.
Hours later, eorge Floyd would die, and his death would trigger protests against police brutality that Tuickly degenerated into radical and racial rioting unseen since the 1960s.
7he arson, looting and attacks on police caused a backlash that spread across the country when the demands of antifa and Black Lives 0atter suddenly became, efund the Police 7hat anti-cop slogan did for law enforcement reform what rioters’ cries of Burn, baby, burn did for the civil rights movement in the 60s.
By the time the fires burned out, 0iddle America was recoiling against the left for indulging the anarchists and denouncing emocratic leaders who refused to condemn the rioting.
Still, despite the pandemic, the third of a million dead, the crash and the seemingly endless riots, President onald 7rump won 74 million votes, the largest total of any president in history. And he held the Senate for the 5epublicans and added more than a dozen seats in the House.
et, Joe Biden, who would be crushed in the Iowa caucuses and 1ew Hampshire primary and lose 1evada to
Bernie Sanders, would be rescued by a massive Black turnout in South Carolina. 5evived, he would go on to win the emocratic nomination on the first ballot.
Sheltering in his basement through the fall, Biden would run up a 7 million-vote victory over onald 7rump, though his verbal and mental deterioration was almost painfully obvious in his few public appearances.
Another wake-up call to how polarized we are came with an orgy of icon-smashing of statues and monuments, from Columbus to presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, 7eddy 5oosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
A large slice of America’s academic and intellectual elite detests the men who created and built the country America has become. 1ot a positive omen for those who believe America has done great things, greater than any nation, and can do them again.
As America was shaken by its vulnerability to a pandemic, the .S. saw its warships and warplanes challenged in the South and (ast China Seas and 7aiwan Strait by a China, which, admonished to allow greater democracy in Hong .ong, proceeded to e - tinguish the e isting democracy there. And the world and the West did nothing.
5evelations that China was running concentration camps in its interior to reeducate 0uslim ighurs in what it means to be a patriot in a nation dominated by Han Chinese and ruled by the Chinese Communist Party evoked only verbal protests.
By year’s end, it was not America warning China but Beijing warning America that manifestations of political or military solidarity with 7aiwan, and arms sales to the island, would constitute interference in the internal affairs of China – – as 7aiwan belongs to China.
Suddenly, a great awakening about the character of the regime we have pampered with investment and trade for three decades appeared stark.
nable to stand up to a China in which they invested so many hopes, the American establishment turns to 5ussia – – a nation with one-tenth China’s population and onetenth of its economy, and no army or navy to match Beijing’s – – as its adversary of choice.
But while President 9ladimir Putin may fulfill well the role of villain, his principal foreign intervention in 2020 was to play the role of peacemaker in the South Caucasus’ war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www. creators.com.