By Morf Morford
Tacoma Daily Index
“How does this end?”
That’s what every military strategist wants to know before initiating a long-term military engagement.
With only a handful of days left of 2020, in a year that has given us unrelenting weather calamities, political upheavals, lawsuits and unexpected intrusions from murder hornets to solar storms we would expect nothing less than an action-packed final episode.
Like that most American of productions of the past decade or so, the TV “reality show.”
2020 lumbers to a climactic conclusion with plot twists and surprise endings to keep us all paying attention until the final curtain falls.
“If there’s one sentence that sums up 2020, it’s “Joe Exotic asks Kim Kardashian to help him get a pardon from Donald Trump.” – Jimmy Kimmel
Here are just a few possibilities of how 2020 could end based on research by our team at the Tacoma Daily Index:
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O, death
Won’t you spare me over till another year
– Ralph Stanley
USA COVID deaths, surpassing 3,000 each day in December, show no sign of decreasing and could easily hit 5,000 daily.
3,000 deaths a day is about 100,000 per month. That’s the population of a small city.
We hit a million new cases just during the second week of December.
For a little perspective, the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th 2001, claimed just under 3,000 lives and left us in a state of national (if not international) mourning for weeks.
President George W. Bush dropped everything to console, encourage and inspire us. Our current president on the other hand…..
Take me to your leader
If the current crises or the resources to face them on earth aren’t enough for you, perhaps the Galactic Federation will save us from ourselves. Will aliens be our salvation or the threat that finally unites us?
Either way, contact seems to have been made (https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-aware-aliens-verge-disclosing-public-israeli-ex-space-chief-says-1553354) but as you probably know, we humans “are not ready” to meet them.
If we’re not ready in 2020, when would we be ready?
We might need an inter-planetary intervention, but given human behavior in 2020, it might be wise for them to wait a year or two.
If there was an epidemic, that definitely would make people accept vaccines. I wouldn’t hope for that, of course, but if you wanted people to love vaccines, an epidemic would remind them how magical they are. – Bill Gates
As COVID vaccines become available, businesses re-open, people travel again, more and more of us look up from our screens and we just might begin to hear the chatter of children in our neighborhoods.
As many of us emerge from our homes after almost a year of distancing from others and the mundane routines of shopping and mixing with strangers at grocery stores or parks, we realize what a sheer gift neighbors, stores and parks really are.
Give me some truth. – John Lennon
Having run out of euphemisms for lies and deception like “debunked” “baseless claims” “false” and “misinformation,” Americans decide to accept and say “the truth and nothing but the truth.”
Conspiracy theories collapse in the atmosphere of the honoring of evidence and proof.
Along with truth, trust and respect are restored.
Conversation and reading become opportunities for learning new things.
We finally get tired of only talking to people who agree with us.
We begin to appreciate the lived life experience of those very different from us.
We finally realize that we learn far more from listening than from saying things we already know.
“If you throw ice at the sun, it will melt; if you throw spears, they will burn; and if you throw bricks, they will crumble. The sun is invincible; all that comes before it is consumed.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
Unprecedented solar storms erupt on the surface of the sun (https://news.yahoo.com/huge-eruption-sun-could-interfere-003400407.html) which could disrupt our terrestrial power grids and communications systems – including cell phone service.
A nightmare for some, and an answer to prayer for many of us.
Whether it is divine intervention or an act of nature, maybe we will remember how to talk to each other face to face.
President Trump resigns (sort of)
President Trump could resign, leaving Mike Pence as president, who in turn, gives Trump a Presidential Pardon. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/525845-prediction-trump-will-resign-pence-will-pardon-him#
This frees up Mr. Trump to do what he is best at; marketing his own brand.
A Presidential Pardon only applies to federal crimes so the soon-to-be-former-president will still be susceptible to charges at the state level (of which there are many) and continuing IRS tax investigations.
The new Civil War
To no one’s surprise, the differences between the two political extremes become so volatile and impassable that a less-than-amicable divorce seems to be the only solution (https://www.newsweek.com/rush-limbaugh-conservative-states-secession-us-1553767?).
Oddly enough, the poor states would get much poorer and the wealthy states would get much wealthier.
Historians, who apparently only live in the “blue” states, might observe that it didn’t work out as planned or to the advantage of the secessionist states the first time.
Out with the old, in with the new
Incoming President Biden intends to have the White House essentially fumigated before he enters –https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/biden-to-have-entire-wh-east-and-west-wings-showered-with-disinfectant-right-after-trump-leaves?
Spray, scrubbing or smudging, whatever it takes.
And, among other things, The White House will have its first resident cat in many years.
Back in the USSR – The Beatles
As many pundits had suspected would happen, Russia (through its state-run media) has invited President Trump to take (legal?) refuge in Russia. (https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-state-media-trump-get-asylum-dodge-prosecutions-2020-12?)
His friendship with Vladimir Putin and knowledge of state secrets should serve him well in his next career move.
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So there you have it, aliens, disease, civil war and a new president.
Just remember that you heard it here first…..
