By: David Conde
2020 was a catastrophic year for holding large gatherings. Most business meetings were done online because corporate members that had the option to travel to a site mostly decided not to.
Schools are one of the major institutions that suffered the most as the K-12 sector had few options other than the Google Classroom as a substitute for holding classes in person. It can be said that at least the elementary and secondary part of educational systems effectively lost a year of serious progress because it was unprepared for this kind of challenge.
Along with the COVID, 2020 also saw a national election between a sitting president that offered a racially tinted authoritarian system designed to keep America from changing and a winning candidate for a divided nation that put forward an agenda designed with a measure of unity and bipartisanship in the face of a pandemic, major challenges to our political system, national infrastructure, and environmental health of the country.
We began 2021 with a January 6th attack on the United States Capitol with Congress in session. This attack (allegedly organized and led by the sitting President) was designed to prevent the certification of the winning candidate.
Just like in a “Banana Republic,” the coup attempt represented a violent effort for the incumbent to stay in power. This has led to major questions about the viability of our institutions and their ability to maintain the democratic values they are charged to protect.
Unable to win the presidential election by violent means, the radicalized Republican Party has resorted to changing voting laws in states they control in order to disenfranchise or make it more difficult for citizens to vote especially in urban and minority areas. This open attempt to rig future elections promises to put the concept self-government to its most difficult test since the Civil War. The existential challenge to our democracy along with the continuing COVID Pandemic and its variations constituted the atmosphere and tone for President Joe Biden’s legislative program in 2021.
The Biden agenda includes the 1.2 trillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a physical infrastructure bill that has successfully passed in a bipartisan fashion. The legislation provides for funding new efforts in public transit, rail, bridges, clean water, high speed internet, the development of a new electrical grid and electric vehicles. A companion 1.7 trillion-dollar bill known as the Build Back Better Act is still being negotiated and modified. The legislation proposes to provide for more of a human infrastructure initiative that funds expanded childcare, universal pre-K, plans to combat climate change, expand Medicare and Medicaid, affordable housing and proposes new taxes on corporations among others to pay for the programs.
Our foreign policy is also changing to focus more on China and its growing economic and military infrastructure. That is why the President decided to leave Afghanistan and reduce our profile in the Middle East.
Unlike Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, China’s economic production is a true rival to the United States. As the two biggest economies in the world, both China and the United States have a lot to lose if they do not get along.
Yes, 2022 promises to be another demanding year as politics never rests and Congress is facing elections. Citizens need to take more responsibility for their citizenship and the freedoms we have taken for granted in the past.
Earlier Americans faced these things successfully and we will do so now. Just be on guard and have a Happy New Year.
