The Worst of Time(s)?

Time magazine's December 14 cover above declared that 2020 was "the worst year ever." But declaring 2020 "the worst year ever" reveals more about the psychology of the delusional state of the media than about reality on the ground. It reflects an absolutely abysmal grasp of human history and a self-absorbed desire to exaggerate an otherwise innocuous flu virus so that the planned-for Biden rebound will be gloriously triumphant.

And it embodies our delusional addiction to measuring the well-being of the human populace with financial markets: as long as stocks are hitting new highs, we're all doing wonderfully, right! So party on, I say, because "the worst year ever" is ending and the rebound of financial markets, already the greatest in recorded history, will only become more fabulous. Who do they think they are fooling?

Putting 2020 into perspective, consider 1177 B.C., when many of the great civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea and Mideast collapsed, and the survivors struggled through a pre-modern Dark Ages. Or consider 1644 A.D., when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Manchu invasion, a series of self-reinforcing misfortunes stemming from extremes of climate (a.k.a. The Little Ice Age) that left millions hungry and vulnerable to disease and the predation of roving bandit armies.

The Little Ice Age and the famine, conflicts, civil wars, coups, revolts and rebellions it launched killed between a quarter and a third of Eurasia's population. Entire villages melted away as starvation drove the survivors to desperation. The misery stretched from western Europe to China, and lasted for decades.

Though it is now relegated to a footnote in history, the Antonine Plague of 165 - 180 A.D. decimated the Mediterranean, Mideast, North African and Eurasian regions, toppling regimes that had endured for ages and very nearly brought the Roman Empire to an inglorious end. Roughly one-fourth of the population died as the novel disease was distributed along Rome's numerous trade routes, which stretched from Northern Europe to Africa and India.

Western Rome's eventual decline and fall was also the result of pandemics and climate change as well as the usual suspects of war, political in-fighting, over-taxation and the stranglehold of self-serving elites.

Europe's inhabitants circa 1350 A.D. would have chosen the years 1347-1351 as "the worst ever" as the Black Plague took the lives of a third of the population.

The inhabitants of North and South America would have selected the years following 1492 and the arrival of Europeans carrying novel diseases as the worst years ever as the diseases carried away between 50% and 90% of the people who were alive in 1491.

Given that fewer people died in total from all causes in 2020 in the United States than in any of the previous five years, according to the Center for Disease Control, how does anyone buy into this rubbish about 2020 being the worst year ever? And they want to give these same people the reins to rule the direction of our nation for the foreseeable future??? Give me a break already!

Inspired by the blog of Charles Hugh Smith, December 28, 2020