Will 2021 be better?

2020 is the year we’d all like to forget, but never will.

Of course, a lot of 2020 was really the result of decisions made back around 2016. We elected populists, they ignored scientists and avoided difficult decisions — that is the essence of populism. They dismantled the national structures designed to protect us from pandemics, wars, populism, and climate change. 2020 was predictable. Indeed, the people who actually know stuff warned us about the risk of a pandemic, of fires and floods, and of political meltdowns caused by Trump, Brexit, populism, and Russian influence. We ignored the warnings.

These last weeks of 2020 have been positive, in a very relative way. I have to keep reminding people that if you can see past all the daily shit showering down on us, things look quite good! Trump will not be president next year; we are at the beginning of the end of the pandemic, with multiple vaccines entering use.

The end of Trump’s grip on the White House is already rippling out around the world, weakening other populist leaders. Bolsonaro is reconsidering running for another term, the UK’s Dominic Cummings, the puppetmaster behind Boris Johnson, has been fired, and Recep Erdogan’s son-in-law has resigned as economy minister, after running the economy into the ground. These are just some examples of subtle shifts around the populist world as corrupt…