Current Historical Events

 Chatting with a friend-of-a-friend in the Before Times (before March 2020 when a national State of Emergency was declared for the CoVid-19 pandemic, and before mask mandates and stay-home-stay-safe orders were on the books), I asked her opinion on current events from the point of view of someone a few years younger than myself.  While I'm quite firmly in the Millennial age group, her point of view was from someone who straddles that gap between "Millennial" and "Gen Z".  Her response was "Every day I wake up is the worst day in history."

That gave me chills.

Every day during the Trump presidency, there was a new scandal, or a new major event.  That was generally Trump's playbook:  Do or say something extreme to distract from other current events.  These past 4 years have been exhausting to live through, trying to stay on top of the news, and being an active consumer by filtering out the bad sources and digging through the fluff and biases to determine my own interpretation.

But, I'm coming from the point of view where I was cognizant and mature enough to understand the optimism and wonderment of the 1990s...not fully, of course, but I was that nerdy kid who read current events magazines and newspapers because of my raging insecurities over feeling "smart" enough.  To give a cultural touchstone, the first major world event that I feel like I fully understood was the Bush V. Gore 2000 presidential election, and for that, I give credit to my 7th grade social studies teacher who made sure we understood what was going on - we shifted our curriculum slightly to study the vagaries of  the United States Electoral College.  Prior to that was the Clinton impeachment, which was just far enough on the other side of my cognitive development (as a young person) as to where I didn't understand it, and my teachers didn't cover current events in depth.

9 months later, the September 11 attacks happened - I walked from my math class into my history class, as the teacher had just flipped the TV on to check the weather, and had seen that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  As we watched TV in the 5 minutes between class, we got to see the second plane hit.  Teacher said something to the effect of "The lesson is cancelled, we're witnessing history.  We'll leave the TV on, and I encourage you to take notes for posterity."

This led to the sequence of events that brought us wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Shock And Awe, The Global War On Terror, and arguably, the roots of the current far-right insurrection here in the United States (but that's another topic for discussion).  Locally, the real estate market began declining around 2005 or 2006, which was part of The Great Recession, the stock market crash, and by 2008, the State of Michigan had declared bankruptcy which impacted me personally by yanking the rug out from under my college financial aid (had to finance an entire year of college, which I'm still struggling through), and led to the events that brought about the Flint Water Crisis.

But right there - I just broadly covered 10 years of history.

Trump's presidency has been so fraught with daily drama and distractions.  His inaugural budget cost me one career-worthy job; his tariffs cost me another.  Add in affairs with porn stars, 100+ golf trips per year, tens of thousands of lies and mistruths, and my head still spins.

This all came to a head on January 6, when a mob, fueled by Trump's lies of a fraudulent election, stormed the United States Capitol looking to do harm to Vice President Pence and Speaker Of The House Pelosi.  Capitol Police opened the gates and barricades letting the insurrectionists into the building.  They stormed past the door security.  They took selfies and videos of themselves in various Congressional offices, or beating police officers with an American flagpole.  They're threatening more insurrection and violence in all 50 states between January 17 and January 20, when President Biden will be inaugurated.

I'm tired, like my friend above, of waking up every day to the worst day in history.