Stare Down Your Fears In The New Year
This week’s Courier Herald column:
Happy New Year. It’s the annual time we take stock in what we’ve done, what we say we’re going to do, and generally finish up the holiday season while really just hoping work goes easy on us for the first week of January.
It’s a time to look back. Last year was a difficult year for many of us. We had a full twelve months of pandemic pivots. The stress of medical issues, both preventive and active, cast a shadow over everything.
Economic issues were also all over the map. Many have found a way to redirect spending into savings and thrive. Many have had their ways of making a living turned upside down. Two generations that have never experienced real inflation have received their first taste of it, with a full meal likely to come. None of us want to hear the term “supply chain issues” ever again.
Most of us likely experienced some kind of loss in 2021. I had two friends die of Covid weeks apart in the early part of the year. Two of my December columns were about the loss of two personal heroes and a mentor, Bob Dole and Johnny Isakson.
That’s an amazing amount of negativity when looking backward, and it’s not overstating the various hardships we faced individually and together. With all of these things going on around us, life still happened.
I attended weddings and saw friends bring children into the world. Descendants of my great-great grandfather held our 74th annual family reunion after having to cancel the gathering the year prior for the first time ever due to the pandemic.
There were more normal holiday celebrations, birthdays, vacations, and random dinners with friends. Thousands gathered together in stadiums and arenas to watch their favorite sports teams and musicians. The Braves even managed to bring home the World Series trophy.
With the state’s unemployment rate now the lowest on record, many are taking stock of their careers and are able to find occupations better matched to their dreams. Companies at all levels have demonstrated that the minimum wage is really set by the free market, and those wages have been rising steadily as companies compete within an incredibly tight labor pool.
That’s a brief macro-view of 2021. Now it’s time for us to turn the page.
2022 will bring us new challenges. Some, such as lingering economic issues, navigating new stages of the pandemic, and all of the misery that comes with being a national toss-up state for mid-term elections are baked in this cake. Other challenges are in the “high potential” category, topped by increasing odds of military issues with Russia in Ukraine and Europe, and China continuing to flex its economic muscles while flouting international human rights issues at home.
There’s going to be a lot of negativity carried forward into this new year, with the potential for entirely new issues that could cause national and/or individual freak-outs. It’s been this way since the beginning of time.
But as it did in 2021, and 2020, and every year before, life will go on. Amidst the chaos, there will be good times and bad.
Our media – mainstream, alternative, and social – will focus on the negative. “Scary” equals clicks.
You likely have made many resolutions already. You likely will be ignoring most of them well before the calendar turns to February. This is perfectly normal too.
I’ll use this time to suggest one additional resolution, and one that would be helpful to you and those around you to do your best to keep. 2022 will require you to keep everything in perspective.
We’ll see headlines designed for maximum fear. We’ll see political ads designed to divide us from our fellow citizens. We’ll see gyrations in the economy that are to be expected after the worldwide factors of production were turned off and given a hard reboot.
Many will be selling fear again this year, repackaged as a fresh commodity. Resolve to yourself not to buy these stale packages, nor to resell it to your family and friends.
About Author
Charlie
Founder of GeorgiaPol.com; Now weekly columnist Very interested in Georgia and Georginas. Interest in politics is waning daily.
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Let us hope the New Year does not head down the road of making school board races non-partisan or they will in a few years go back to it. Tennessee just opened it up to partisan races. The problem is you get candidates that are highly radical but don’t have to declare a party so when they run they say all the magic buzz words so conservatives vote for them and then once in they are liberals. Partisanship discourages this and at least allows non-informed voters at least the knowledge of voting for a supposed conservative(R) or a democrat. I am sure all the democrats are secretly giddy over Duncan’s plan to make school board races non-partisan.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here– but Happy New Year to all.
Even when races are considered nonpartisan, it is often really only a thin veneer imo. Nonpartisan candidates can, and will, show up at joint partisan fundraising events, e.g. Flyers may include endorsements from partisan figures. Policies and platforms are often obviously aligned with one partisan viewpoint or another….
So probly most voters have some information like that.
For those seeing names for the 1st time at ballot box? Hopefully, it prompts a little learning. And maybe prompts the candidates to be more informative and thorough with their outreach.
Having nonpartisan races makes it easier for candidates to mislead, you say?
First, I’d ask- are they actually misleading, or might they simply be effectuating their stated beliefs in a manner inconsistent with expected party protocols? (Having at least some variation in thinking, and independence from partisan machinery and vote whipping, is perhaps one of the more important reasons to at least attempt nonpartisan races.)
Overall, I applaud the effort to attempt to take any layer of rancor out of any election, and removing labels is one way to do that- although many people will continually insist on putting party labels on nonpartisan candidates anywys, But with ppl out there running around outrageously and detrimentally demonizing opposing political parties? Let’s at least try to take the partisan whip out of the hands of those who would use it to punish those who are trying to put the interests of children (and not the interests of party) first.
Whew, what a relief.
I was becoming quite concerned after several years of reading respected scholars on democracy, civil wars, authoritarianism, and demagoguery who repeatedly point to the warning signs of a republic in trouble.
Silly me, believing those open letters signed by all living former secretaries of defense.
What was I thinking to be so foolish as to believe the dozens of elected officials openly threatening violence against their fellow Americans.
I should have known better than to believe anyone with a bunch of letters after their name… or retired Generals… or former Cabinet members.
Thankfully Charlie brings clarity with, ‘it’s the media’s fault’.
I now suspect General Mattis is a plant for the NYT and Fiona Hill is working undercover for CNN.
This site will publish any libertarian or right wing nonsense unchecked, unfortunately, but it is ironic that former secretaries of “defense” who led decades of war mongering were so concerned with violence at home.