2018 Retrospective

As is typical, I'm working this New Year's Eve. I have long considered the holiday 'amateurs' night': establishments jack up their prices, people who can't handle their booze do stupid things. I'm here for a double shift- arrive in the afternoon, leave in the morning, avoid any of the idiocy which might take place on the roads around midnight. The fact that I'm getting holiday pay for the 12-8 shift doesn't hurt, either.

Anyway, the weird thing about 2018 is that I have been doing okay, but am distinctly aware that the shit is hitting the fan in these here United States. I'm insulated from the worst of it, being a straight white male with a full-time job, as John Scalzi put it, the 'lowest difficulty setting' for a human, but I have immigrant friends who are still very concerned about the way things are going in the country.

It seems like the Parkland school mass shooting took place ages ago, but it was February of this year... Trump years are like dog years, each one seems longer than the time it takes for the Earth to revolve around the sun. The lack of action in the face of additional mass shootings is infuriating.

On the climate front, the findings are dire, but the United States, which should have been at the vanguard of the renewable energy vanguard since the 1970s, is stuck with a maladministration which refuses to budge on the fossil fuel problem.

Happily, some of the big right-wing funders are scaling down their support for the GOP and alt-right groups. I guess pissing millions of dollars down a rathole didn't work out well for them. Meanwhile, among the right-wing proles, things aren't going so well.

The situation at the southern border is sickening, especially in light of two children dying in the custody of the Border Patrol, and the appalling, inhumane conditions in ICE detention facilities. We can't even pretend to be 'the good guys' anymore.

I'm doing okay financially, I actually received a decent raise on the job, but part of me is kicking myself for maxing out on my 401(k) and I don't even want to think of how many thousands of dollars (on paper) that I've lost in the stock market. Thankfully, I'm young enough to ride out this downturn. Nothing material has changed, I'm a 'hold your assets' kind of investor.

The biggest thing to be happy about is the Blue Wave that won back the House of Representatives. This promises to usher in a new year of investigations and accountability in DC. Hopefully, the GOP rout will intensive in 2020. It's good to know that the public woke the fuck up, and decided to exercise some civic responsibility, especially in the face of voter disenfrachisement.

2018 has been a mixed bag- some personal gains, some personal losses, though nothing major. Politically, culturally, existentially, it's been a disaster, but I am confident that the pendulum is swinging back to a sanity here in the 'States. I sure hope so, and am looking forward to looking forward.