Reflections on an unparalleled year – 2020.

It seems like a lifetime ago when layers of smoke rolled over cities across the country, and Australians both rural and urban collectively retched under the oppressive trappings of last year’s Black Summer bush fires.

Now, twelve months on and 2020 has ended the same way it began – disordered and uncertain with an opaque sense of hope just beyond reach. In what many could describe as the introduction to a dystopian apocalyptic novel - with this new year, Australians must once again face down catastrophe as the ravages of COVID-19 continue to flare and wane throughout the country.

In January, while bushfires engulfed large swaths of never burnt or perhaps even explored terrain, most of us could only spectate through noxious miasma as fellow Australians were backed onto beaches and forced from their homes while blazes tore through every state and territory.

In Mallacoota, many were lucky to lose only possessions and homes while being whisked away on navy landing boats while the flames licked the shores of their coastal ‘paradise’.

Awestruck by the sheer loss of life our country endured (both human and animal), enraged citizens demanded answers for the disaster of a generation that seemingly could have been tempered with better preparation and funding.

Yet, Australians were met with political subterfuge and deflection, only to find that the man tasked with guiding us had gone to Hawaii on holiday.

When reprieve finally came, and the embers all settled – across the nation, 75 people hadn’t been lucky enough and had paid with their lives. Some had volunteered to fight the blazes, while others hadn’t heeded warnings in time. But all 75 were someone’s mother, father, brother, sister, son, or daughter – and all 75 losses were 75 too many.

Protests were seen country-wide, as normal people on both sides of the aisle demanded action and answers. And, when an independent inquiry found that these fires had in fact been intensified by global warming – regular citizens demanded better leadership.

Yet, COVID-19 seemingly arrived for Scott Morrison just in time. As his bungled response to one crisis had highlighted his ineptitude of leadership, here was another for him to try his hand at. Luckily for him, we live in a country with a robust public healthcare system and a rigorous quarantine scheme. So, even if his leadership skills were as dismal as his spray-tanned friend’s across the pond were, Australian’s could sleep well at night knowing our compatriots in healthcare and government had our backs.

Not disregarding the Australian lives lost to COVID, and the systemic failures that have become apparent, we have so far seen this pandemic through rather unscathed. Other nations have done better, but we have certainly not done poorly. And, to all of our frontline workers, we owe an unserviceable debt of gratitude.

In looking to the US, where the death toll from COVID has now surpassed 350 thousand dead, the world watched as a country that was once the beacon for free expression, liberty, and innovation, descended further into a writhing pit of conspiracy theories and racially fuelled division. As cities burned, and more people of colour were gunned down with impunity by those sworn to protect them, Trump sought to galvanize a political rhetoric underpinned by the concepts of an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. Friend and foe. Winners and losers.

For minorities and people of colour across the United States, 2020 will certainly be remembered as one of the harder years of this century. Struggling literally and figuratively beneath the boot of oppression, and often too impoverished to pay for medical assistance or food, due to overnight joblessness – disproportionate numbers have and will continue to die from COVID. And further, though these deaths will be tallied as having succumbed to a novel respiratory sickness that has swept the globe, in America, they are the result of something far worse.

Decades of economic austerity, cuts to social services, education, and the privatisation of healthcare and other essential aids has led to an environment primed for disaster. Dismally underprepared to handle but the mildest of public health emergencies, COVID has moved quickly through the country, overwhelming hospitals and killing those too poor to pay for their own protection.

So, as democracy in America began its death throes, plagued at once by two viruses – the second of which prefers spray tan and narcissism to PPE and social distancing – vultures wearing MAGA hats circled above, waiting for a sign from their Commander in Thief.

And, wait for long they did not have to.

For only 6 days into this new year, the machinations of a disillusioned yet voracious minority manifest into a frightening reality as believers of QAnon and other fringe conspiracies descended on Washington D.C.

Further spurred on by Trump’s top lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who called for violence at a rally in the Capitol that morning. “Let’s have trial by combat” he was filmed saying to a crowd of thousands – further sewing savage social entropy into an already torn tapestry – it would be hard for anyone to think of a more provoking five words.

Too daft or selectively na?ve to understand that the disinformation that birthed their political views had been funnelled via algorithms straight into the palms of their hands, Trump loyalists rose up and desecrated perhaps modern history’s greatest monument of democracy.

Those who rally for “freedom of speech” often decry the freedom of consequence, and are still confused when they’re face down on the concrete being handcuffed.

The term ‘revolutionists’ has been used widely over the past few days to describe those that raided the Capitol. But in my mind, revolutionists are those who have been successful in achieving their goals. For me, basement-dwelling terrorists better captures these individuals. Novices with no frame of greater reference, whose names history will ultimately forget.

Consumerist conservatives waving flags and wearing red baseball caps made in Mexico or China, who understand little about the forces of capitalism and the pressures that free-market economics have placed on their very lives.

Fomented by an increasingly irrelevant man with a badly damaged ego, one person’s protest is another person’s riot, and the disorganised insurrection that was seen on Jan 6th is certainly closer to the latter.

For many Americans, myself included, it is with a degree of cautionary hope that I believe Biden will be able to mend some of the fissures that have opened across America in the last four years. However, as has been said by others, Trump is only a symptom of the issues that lay deep within the bedrock of American democracy. Issues that will not be fixed in one or two presidential terms, but instead will take generations to correct.

And, until America can release the strap from its arm, and pull the needle of constant consumerism and individualism from under its rotting flesh – change seems far away still.

As the world looks elsewhere for leadership and solidarity against the challenges facing us all, it has become apparent that only Americans can help America, but first, they must actually want to.

Yet, Americans are not alone in their delusions of freedom either, as we all are becoming a part of a profit-driven digital ecosystem that both thirsts for and rewards outrage and sedition. Without developing our own critical minds, we too are destined to be trapped in the distortions of our own fabricated realities.

Information is force-fed to each of us, and the algorithms that underpin our social medias tailor this content to our individual news-diets. After all, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are businesses, not public services.

So, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.

In Australia, we are not without political challenges too.

Our politics have increasingly become more partisan, and non-political issues like the causes and remedies for bushfires have become divisive party-driven topics. With the pandemic also, our state premiers have been labeled both dictators and saviours, with the major differences between them really coming down to whether they’re labor or liberal, and who Murdoch likes best.

Dangerously conservative brinkmanship has not only pushed our nation to the edge of environmental collapse but has done so all over the world too. Nature’s warnings have gone unheeded, sustainable policies have gone undrafted, and exciting opportunities for a better tomorrow have yet been left unseized.

The inherited sins of our predecessors will be felt for generations to come. Our bushland will burn again, and our native animals will bear the weight of extinction once more – unless those who we pay to run our nation do better.

And they must.

In summarising my thoughts on last year and my hopes for the year ahead, I’m drawn to what is thought to be the discovery of human civilisation itself.

In a frequently cited quote, acclaimed physician and author Ira Byock wrote:

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead?to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.”

We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.