A Janus-faced America

“Yet, despite the extremes we have confronted this year, there might be a way of turning away from this ‘great divide.'”

Putting it lightly, the past year has been a milieu of outbreaks—those of infectious illness and those which decried social and political agendas. It is a blunt statement, but it does not require much elaboration. We have all lived through it.

We have experienced the hypocrisy of inconsistent mask-wearing mandates—across stores, offices, and institutions with varying procedures and, seemingly, varying levels of concern. As the year progressed, we moved through a gradation of confronting the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and then producing what counterattacks we could.

Awareness led to response and response to prevention. Even so, the tallies of confirmed COVID-19 cases and associated deaths have continued to fluctuate, as has the mood of the country.

The protests, the establishment and fall of CHAZ in Seattle, the vehemently opposing political views regarding the election all showcase what America has morphed into. We have become a population of maximalists who have gone so far as to refuse to listen to ideas and opinions from viewpoints that differ from our own.