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Is 2020 Really That Bad?

If you're active on social media, you're aware of the controversy and panic that rules the Internet right now.  From news articles to sarcastic memes to conspiracy theories, many people are acting as if 2020 is the worst year in the history of the world.  We've had celebrity deaths, race riots, and a plague!  Certainly these are signs of the Apocalypse, right?!

Today, however, I want to ask one question: "Is 2020 really that bad?"

Think about it for a moment.  Consider all that we've endured this year.  Is 2020 really as bad as the Internet would have us believe?

No.  It's really not that bad.

"You're blind!" you say.  "You're in denial!" you insist.

Nah.  Think about it.  What have we experienced in 2020 that hasn't occurred before?

A pandemic?  The COVID-19 pandemic has consistently been blown out of proportion due to incorrect assumptions about transmission and the subsequent manipulation of statistics.  Mankind has endured many plagues that were far worse.  In fact, we have had similar biological scares within the last five years.

Race riots?  2020 is not the first time that we've seen race riots or police violence, nor has it been a particularly noteworthy year in that regard.  Black men were shot in 2019, 2018, 2017, etc.

Murder hornets?  Eh, that never really materialized.  It's a shame--that would've been fun!

Why, then, does it feel like 2020 is the worst year ever?  Why does it feel like 2020 keeps throwing curve-balls our way and will never end?  I think the answer is two-fold.

Firstly, we are very present-centric.  By "we" I mean people, the entirety of mankind, the human race.  We are all, every human being living at any given time, very narcissistic, assuming that our day and age is the worst, or the best, that has ever been.  We're self-absorbed, temporally speaking.  We are more evolved than any other generation, we believe, but we are also the most evil.  Everyone who came before us is racist and sexist, but our world is so bad that we have arrived at the point of no return.  Consider the proliferation of apocalyptic prophesies throughout history; every age throughout history has had someone predict that that age would be the final age.  Whether Americans in the 21st century are worse than other people groups throughout time I can't say.  It feels that way, but, then again, isn't that the point?

This tendency is exacerbated in an age of instant, endless information.  We get news on the minute, not even just the hour, and we receive not merely the news about our own community or country, but the news from every corner of the Earth.  I think we are discovering that this constant stream of information, which constantly reveals the ugliness of human depravity, is emotionally and mentally unhealthy.  It is easy to become overwhelmed with the present and to idealize simpler, idyllic bygone eras.  Which leads me to my second point...

Secondly, fear is a powerful motivator.  We are sheep, and we are being controlled.  If you want to know by whom we are being controlled, you simply follow the power and money.  The first culprit is the media.  The "media" is, of course, not a single entity.  It is comprised of many different groups with various methods and goals for communicating information, but their unifying motivation is ratings.  The media has long known that the only thing that sells better than sex is fear, and they have become masters at manipulating the masses by harnessing the power of fear.

Closely linked to the media is our second culprit, the government.  Men like to control other men.  Again, there are many reasons for this.  Some politicians are power-hungry tyrants who crave the thrill of being in charge of other people, while others simply enjoy the ease and wealth that comes with being career politicians.  Others still, those who genuinely view themselves as civil servants, zealously want to help others and think that they should be given the power to control our society, regardless of the desires of their constituents (think Leslie Knope from Parks & Rec).

The COVID crisis has been a textbook example of fear-based propaganda being created and spread by the media and government.  The case and fatality statistics have been falsified and/or misconstrued consistently.  Pandemic models created by national and international health organizations assumed the worst based on conjectural information regarding the transmission of the virus.  We are bad people, we are told, if we hold church services or refuse to wear masks in public, despite a dearth of evidence to substantiate those claims.  Social media if full of sheep, or should I say parrots, who perpetuate the overly simplistic fear-mongering that dominates our TVs and the Internet.

So, no, I don't believe that 2020 is the worst year ever.  I do, however, believe that it is an election year, and the Democrats have about the least electable candidate ever.  I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016, and I'm not planning on voting for him this time around (I'm undecided), but you're blind if you don't think that this crisis (real or contrived) is being weaponized against our sitting President.

2020 will come and go, just like 2019 did and just like 2021 will.  We need to stop living in fear, which is, of course, much more easily said that done.  To accomplish that feat, we're going to need way more prayer and way less time on social media.

In the Age of the Internet there's a thin, fine line between being informed and being manipulated.  Be diligent to be the former and not the latter.

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