This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated January 8, 2021
Nothing suddenly changes simply because the calendar has flipped to the next year. However, after a very challenging 2020, everyone seems to be ready to turn the page and begin a new year that holds the promise of ending in a much better place than it began.
The pandemic that has affected everyone’s life for the past ten months in ways nobody could have imagined, is only getting worse, but there is a light at the end of tunnel. Vaccinations that began several weeks ago have been moving forward far too slowly, which means it is more important than ever to follow suggested protocols to avoid contracting and spreading COVID-19, but there is hope that the rollout of the vaccine will accelerate and at some point later this year, we will be able to take steps toward returning to normal life.
Economically, so many have been negatively impacted by the pandemic and our state and city budgets are now facing dramatic shortfalls as a result, but a gradual return to normalcy provides hope for a dramatic, long-term recovery. There is hope that in the not-too-distant future, businesses can reopen, jobs will return, and people can begin to get out and spend money on things they have been unable to do during the pandemic.
Politically, there is so much to rebound from after the past four tumultuous, chaotic years, but there is hope that a return to relative normalcy in the White House enables a competent and effective approach to addressing the pandemic and the economic recovery. People who did not vote for Joe Biden will obviously tend to disagree with his positions, but if his massive effort to vaccinate Americans and attack the pandemic is successful, and his policies to “build back better,” as he likes to say, lead to improvements in the economy that are noticeable to everyone, that will be something we can agree all with.
“… with the encouragement of the president and over a third of all members of congress, as of this moment, violence seems like a very real possibility.”
As I write this, winners for the two Georgia runoff elections, which will decide which party controls the Senate, have not been decided and the joint congressional session to officially count the electoral college votes for the presidential election has yet to take place. I am hopeful that by the time this is read, my hope for the Democrats to win the Georgia seats and, in turn, take the Senate, has come to fruition. I also hope that the objections of Republican members of Congress to the electoral college vote count merely resulted in an embarrassing spectacle as they attempted to subvert the will of the people and that the protests taking place in Washington in support of President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, have come and gone without incident.
While I do not expect the theatrics of GOP Senators and House Representatives inside the Capitol building to have any effect on the certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election, I am extremely concerned about what may occur on the streets of the U.S. capital. Hopefully by the time this is printed, those concerns have been proven to be needless, but with the encouragement of the president and over a third of all members of congress, as of this moment, violence seems like a very real possibility.
I completely disagree with anyone who believes voting for a second Trump term was the right decision, but I understand their disappointment in the result of the election. I felt that way in 2016. I was shocked that Election Night when Trump was projected as the forty-fifth president of the United States. I felt depressed, horrified, fearful. But do you know what I did not do? I did not pretend that it did not happen. I did not convince myself that Hillary Clinton had actually won. Trump becoming president was a reality I wished were not true, but I knew that my wish did not trump what was reality.
As much as I hope 2021 sees us begin to emerge from this pandemic and life starts to return to normal, I equally hope that there is a shift toward more people accepting reality, because without that, there can be no return to normal.
