Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
Last week, just before Christmas, we were bombarded with news of a possible “cyclone bomb”, a megablizzard that could bring record snowfall, dangerous windchill temperatures, and hazardous travel conditions. We were warned. Winter Storm Eliot was bearing down on us. And, for some parts of the country, it was everything they claimed it would be. Thousands of flights were canceled during the holidays, millions lost power, and dozens of deaths were attributed to Elliot. For others, however—the lucky ones—Elliot seemed to be a huge dud.
Initial forecasts predicted southeastern Wisconsin would receive up to a foot or more of snow. We received two to three inches. And although wind chills were in the neighborhood of thirty to forty below, this was not the Snowpocalypse we had been expecting. Buffalo, on the other hand, was walloped with 22.5 inches of snow in a single day. Parts of western Michigan were also slammed. Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and other parts of the South suffered immensely.
As we get set to bring in the new year, we inevitably tend to look back at the previous one. In a sense, Elliot was a microcosm of 2022. It was a year of extremes, of radical swings between wonder and disgust, of integrity and shame, of rationality and foolishness, of courage and cowardice, and—finally—of beauty and pain.
In February, Russia invaded the Ukraine. At the time, it seemed the most extreme of mismatches. Russia is a superpower that boasted one of the most powerful military machines in the world while the Ukraine was, in comparison, a small state that seemed to have neither the tools nor the wherewithal to withstand the Russian onslaught. Yet they not only stopped the invaders’ advance, they eventually took back some of the territory the Russians had seized in their initial attack. And, with the help of weapons supplied by the US and other NATO entities, the Ukraine has managed to move from a defensive to an offensive posture and to take the fight onto Russian soil. President Vladimir Zelensky has been a paragon of courage and determination to his people and to the world. Against all odds, the Ukranians have stood firm against this tyranny. Last week, when he addressed the Joint Session of the US Congress, Zelensky held up the Ukraine as an example, much like the US in its own Revolutionary War, as a bulwark for democracy. He was right. In this age of extremes, Zelensky is an exemplar of courage, integrity, and fortitude.
On the other side of the ledger, former US president Donald Trump finally has been forced by the courts to hand over his tax returns and has also been recommended for four criminal charges, including inciting insurrection and conspiracy to defraud the United States, by the January 6th Congressional Committee. Even though his poll numbers are on the decline, Mr. Trump recently declared that he will be running for president again in 2024. After his self-serving, illegal, and deadly bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election by inciting a mob to storm the Capitol, Trump is once again positioning himself not to lead the greatest nation in the world, but to fill his coffers—through the office of the presidency—with as much money as his tiny little hands can grab. He is a paragon of the worst of America: greed, short-sightedness, and ruthlessness.
In May, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe -v- Wade, the 1974 precedent which had legalized abortion in America, even though a majority of Americans support a woman’s right to choose. According to a report by PewResearch, 61% of adults believe abortion should be legal. Yet a conservative majority of Supreme Court justices, appointed by Republican presidents beholden to extremist pro-life groups, decided to ignore the will of the people and legal precedent to install their own conservative agenda. They removed all federal protections for abortion, throwing the reproductive rights of its citizens back to the states.
Nationwide protests erupted immediately. Citizens in states like Wisconsin, that had no state laws backing up Roe, found themselves subject under antiquated and draconian laws prohibiting and criminalizing abortion. In some of these states, pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother or that occur as a result of rape or incest are completely illegal and doctors that still see fit to perform them can be held legally liable.
This narrow-minded and regressive ruling has been met by the will of the American people. Health care activists in states with progressive reproductive laws are volunteering to help their less fortunate neighbors. Illinois has set up clinics adjacent to the Wisconsin border. Other organizations have offered to take care of transportation and other expenses for disadvantaged women who need these medical procedures.
And then, in the face of this repressive mentality, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Biden on December 13, 2022. This law provides statutory rights for same-sex and interracial marriage. Congress takes one step forward; the SCOTUS takes two steps back.
Late in October, megazillionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter. Of course, being one of the ultra point-zero-zero-one percent, he was able to buy the company and implement his own singular—and definitively weird vision, which if Twitter was a normal business, would have been okay. But Twitter is a social media platform that has extraordinary influence over millions of people worldwide, and Musk, as evidenced by his decisions to reinstate Donald Trump’s account and to publish rap star Ye’s incredibly antisemitic postings, seemed to have a limited understanding of what he gotten himself into.
Musk and Bezos and Branson—men so rich that they have built their own space fleets. Men who seem to have little or no regard for the people who work for them. After slashing his workforce, Musk proposed that his employees install beds into their offices because who needs to go home—right? Last month, despite stern resistance by Mr. Bezos, Amazon employees manage to install their first union in a Staten Island warehouse.
Then we have the American underclass, many of whom are struggling to meet day-to-day expenses. Despite some success in establishing a minimum wage and unionizing, many Americans still live in poverty. This monetary polarization is yet another of the extremes displayed in last year’s events.
We also saw the Uvalde massacre compared with an overwhelming public mandate for stronger gun laws.
We also saw diabetics dying from lack of insulin because of big pharma’s decision to jack up prices.
It goes on and on…
Yin and yang. Good and bad. Visionary and short-sighted. While there was no lack of confusion, hatred, abuse, and evil in this last year, there was a corresponding balance of compassion, foresight, virtue, and good sense.
Winter Storm Elliot may have missed us, but others felt the full measure of his wrath. The ebb and flow of events in the coming year may miss us, hit us, or merely nick us, but our fates don’t have to be determined by forces beyond our control. We don’t have to sit and wait for the storm.
Likes this last year, 2023 will contain immeasurable good and unfathomable evil, but that won’t make or break the year. It will be only as righteous or as hateful as we make it.