Working Through the Backlog

I acted out a relatively new summertime tradition during the holiday break. I set aside all the magazines I had received in the late summer and fall (really since the end of our beach vacation in July) and worked through all of them. This was my way of saying good riddance to what was in most regards a rotten news year. Those magazines, filled with news from 2020, didn't deserve to see the new year tomorrow. And after reading issue after issue in which either Covid, Trump, Biden, or Trump's jesters were on the cover, I know I'm right. 

The pile. 

Those headlines don't deserve to see the dawning of another year. 

What a bitter, awful, rotten, miserable, toxic year of news. A year in which Americans were at the meanest. A year in which selfishness was glorified. A year in which common sense had a hard time being seen or heard above the din of grievance and acrimony. 

I pulled some interesting tidbits from the pile of unread news, and it will help me incorporate thoughtful examples in my work with students. More importantly, it may help me turn the conversations in social settings with friends and family. I'm talked out, and even more importantly listened-out, from politics and Covid in 2020. I can't do it again in 2021. Perhaps the recovered news items I read will help me turn potentially contentious conversations into thoughtful ones. Here are some of the interesting items: 

• The pace at which globalization took place was slowing in the 2010s, well before Covid. There may be interesting ways in which automation, a re-think on supply chains, and a sobering reassessment of power relations make trade a little less vibrant in the next decade. 
• Print journalism was struggling long before the internet's threat became apparent this century. In fact, I probably need to think of my normal growing up (a thick Philadelphia Inquirer whose Sunday edition would take the better part of a Sunday to digest) as an anomaly, or special period in history (like the post-World War II boom) rather than as the normal. 
• It seems as if electric cars will be mainstream, and that this may happen more quickly in the next few years than I was expecting. That CR-V we purchased in November 2019 might be the last gasoline car I purchase, which hurts given how much I enjoy driving. 
• One of the most cynical but useful quips I've seen that may put my frustrations with social media into perspective: "If you're not buying, you're the product." By the way, I'm a paid subscriber to four distinct news outlets: The New York Times, The Economist, The Philadelphia Inquirer (digital only), and The Week. If one counts sports, I guess The Athletic would be a fifth. 
• I probably should stop the practice of drinking coffee immediately upon waking up. There's allegedly some science to how the caffeine may inhibit the metabolism of the breakfast sugars. 
• Get ready for a wave of mergers . . .
• . . . and an undertow of antitrust activity. 

And that's it for 2020. A year that saw me more engaged with the news than is probably healthy. A year in which I muttered to myself much more often than my relatively weak slate of blog entries would suggest. A year in which estrangement from loved ones with whom I disagreed politically seemed dangerously close.  A year that I pray gives way to a time in which we at least try to be more decent to one another in this country.