Opinion

2019 in review: A world of, on, and under fire

By JORDAN J. PHELAN
By Jordan J. Phelan

What are the qualifications of a good year? Is it the ability to take the good with the bad and keep moving or do the negative incidents of the past 365 days bar any productive progress? How is the virtue of a year determined? Is it measured in the number of bodies piled upon one another through acts of senseless violence and injustice around the planet or does it lie in a community’s enthusiasm to deliver Christmas cards to a hospitalized woman when that is all she wants for the holiday season? Why are beginnings and ends of years the categorical launching pad for committing to constructive change? Is it the gathering of loved ones radiating with joy during the holiday season that motivate us to just be ourselves or does the conforming pressures of society force us to become what it wants? Whatever you believe in, no matter how great you feel going into 2020, it is undeniable that the year of 2019 was, is, and forever will be remembered as the time the world was of, on, and under fire.

A World Of Fire

Before 2019 celebrations could even begin to ring around the globe, millions of Americans who serve their country working for the federal government found their jobs to be on hold during the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history. The 35-day shutdown was sparked by a prolonged disagreement between Congress and the White House over $5.7 billion for the border wall, even though DonaldTrump made it a campaign promise that Mexico would pay for it. Also at the border, thousands of children were taken and separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy and the situation is still unresolved.

The year also marked an unprecedented number of lies from the White House, from saying that the whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s infamous July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was inaccurate and that Joe Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating his son Hunter and that the U.S. economy today is the best in history and that he passed the biggest tax cut in history and that the United States has “lost” money on trade deficits and that the country is more respected now than it was four years ago. The lies go on and on, and while I hope this will stop in 2020 it is highly unlikely that it will.

A World On Fire

Earth is now the warmest it has been in some 120,000 years of existence. Eighteen of the last 19 years have been the warmest on record, and in 2019 Alaska and Hawaii each experienced their warmest January-November period in the 125-year recorded history.

In addition, Australia and California are still dealing with raging wildfires threatening the lives of millions of people. Antarctica’s ice sheets have not only begun to melt faster but ice masses presumed by scientists to be largely immune to melting are now losing ample ice. One-third of the Himalayan glaciers are now projected to vanish by the end of the 21st Century. The Bering Strait is no longer blanketed by ice. The human race will probably hit and exceed the Paris Agreement’s 2 degree Celsius target. Carbon dioxide levels hit an all-time monthly record of 414.7 parts per million in May. And thousands of Americans are expected to die in cities during future heat waves, according to studies.

A World Under Fire

The year of 2019 saw more mass killings than any year dating back to at least the 1970s. In total, the U.S. was home to 41 mass killings — four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator — of which 33 were mass shootings. Most of the mass killings barely became national news at all.

James Densley, a criminologist and professor at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, said the AP/USA Today/Northeastern database confirms and mirrors what his own research into exclusively mass shootings has shown and said, “This seems to be the age of mass shootings.”

Now, everywhere from movie theatres and institutions of learning to shopping centers and places of worship never feel safe.

Gun reform has been addressed in speech after speech, even by the most powerful person in the world. Yet we are still without necessary policy change. We know what needs to happen, so let’s do it. A life is more precious than a gun.

Here’s Some Water

All of this has led to further dividing the nation along the lines of our very values. We see each other as enemies rather than fellow human beings, and that needs to be a thing of the past. Party and emotion do not trump reason and fact.

We are not several states. We are the United States.

We are not millions of individuals. We are one nation.

We the People decide what values we uphold, and the elucidations and declarations of great minds of great men and women have proven and displayed in the course of fervent actions that all of us have hearts that beat with a constant perpetual burning of passion and love; of hope and sacrifice; of appreciation and gratitude.

The world is of, on, and under fire, and that will not change with the dropping of the ball in Times Square. But every day the sun rises we are given a new opportunity to make where we live a better place. So, when we wake up on Jan. 1, 2020, let us be reminded of the values that we all share, independent of our childhood, our experiences, our individualism. That we desire to be part of a community. That we hope for the health and prosperity of our fellow man. That everyone deserves to embrace and showcase and be who they are without fear of injury or judgement.

So, what I ask this New Year is for the return of civic peace, for while we may disagree with one another, I wish everyone and anyone the best for them and those they love, because at the end of the day, whether we like it or not, we are one.

Jordan J. Phelan is the managing editor of the Eagle Times.

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