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2020: America's Wake-Up Call
Townhall.com ^ | December 29, 2020 | Pat Buchanan

Posted on 12/29/2020 4:48:29 AM PST by Kaslin

Who could have predicted how dreadful a year 2020 would be.

By this New Year's Eve, 19 million to 20 million Americans will have contracted a deadly virus in a pandemic that exploded out of China to carry off 333,000 Americans, one of every 1,000 of us.

As 2021 begins, Americans will be dying at the rate of 10,000 a week and contracting the virus at a rate of more than 1 million new cases a week.

Yet, during that same year, miracles occurred. Vaccines were created, tested and mass-produced by Pfizer and Moderna that could, with 95 percent effectiveness, stop this virus cold.

If Americans can reach "herd immunity" -- from having caught and survived the virus or having been vaccinated against it -- the COVID-19 pandemic might be contained by the summer of 2021.

Economically, the pandemic caused the worst crash since the Great Depression with scores of thousands of schools closed and empty, and scores of thousands of stores, bars and restaurants shuttered, many never to open again.

Yet, in the same year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke every record, crossing the 30,000 mark, again and again, with the NASDAQ and S&P 500 reaching new highs.

Thus, as tens of millions of Americans saw their savings wiped out and had trouble making rent payments and feeding their families, some investors saw their stock portfolios surge. Yes, Virginia, there are two Americas.

On Memorial Day weekend, a white police officer in Minneapolis was taped kneeling for nine minutes on the neck of a Black suspect.

Hours later, George Floyd would die, and his death would trigger protests against police brutality that quickly degenerated into radical and racial rioting unseen since the 1960s.

The arson, looting and attacks on police caused a backlash that spread across the country when the demands of antifa and Black Lives Matter suddenly became, "Defund the Police!" That anti-cop slogan did for law enforcement reform what rioters' cries of "Burn, baby, burn!" did for the civil rights movement in the '60s.

By the time the fires burned out, Middle America was recoiling against the left for indulging the anarchists and denouncing Democratic leaders who refused to condemn the rioting.

Still, despite the pandemic, the third of a million dead, the crash and the seemingly endless riots, President Donald Trump won 74 million votes, the largest total of any president in history. And he held the Senate for the Republicans and added more than a dozen seats in the House.

Yet, Joe Biden, who would be crushed in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary and lose Nevada to Bernie Sanders, would be rescued by a massive Black turnout in South Carolina. Revived, he would go on to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot.

Sheltering in his basement through the fall, Biden would run up a 7 million-vote victory over Donald Trump, though his verbal and mental deterioration was almost painfully obvious in his few public appearances.

Another wake-up call to how polarized we are came with an orgy of icon-smashing of statues and monuments, from Columbus to presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

A large slice of America's academic and intellectual elite detests the men who created and built the country America has become. Not a positive omen for those who believe America has done great things, greater than any nation, and can do them again.

As America was shaken by its vulnerability to a pandemic, the U.S. saw its warships and warplanes challenged in the South and East China Seas and Taiwan Strait by a China, which, admonished to allow greater democracy in Hong Kong, proceeded to extinguish the existing democracy there. And the world and the West did nothing.

Revelations that China was running concentration camps in its interior to "reeducate" Muslim Uighurs in what it means to be a patriot in a nation dominated by Han Chinese and ruled by the Chinese Communist Party evoked only verbal protests.

By year's end, it was not America warning China but Beijing warning America that manifestations of political or military solidarity with Taiwan, and arms sales to the island, would constitute interference in the internal affairs of China -- as Taiwan belongs to China.

Suddenly, a great awakening about the character of the regime we have pampered with investment and trade for three decades appeared stark.

Unable to stand up to a China in which they invested so many hopes, the American establishment turns to Russia -- a nation with one-tenth China's population and one-tenth of its economy, and no army or navy to match Beijing's -- as its adversary of choice.

But while President Vladimir Putin may fulfill well the role of villain, his principal foreign intervention in 2020 was to play the role of peacemaker in the South Caucasus' war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: ccp; coronavirus; trumpadministration; wuhancoronavirus

1 posted on 12/29/2020 4:48:29 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Joe and the Ho inaugurated on January 20th thats the wake up call


2 posted on 12/29/2020 4:54:34 AM PST by ronnie raygun ( Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.")
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To: Kaslin

“”As 2021 begins, Americans will be dying at the rate of 10,000 a week and contracting the virus at a rate of more than 1 million new cases a week.””

Really, Pat?


3 posted on 12/29/2020 5:19:55 AM PST by Thank You Rush ( )
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To: Kaslin

“”tens of millions of Americans saw their savings wiped out””

Again - really, Pat?


4 posted on 12/29/2020 5:21:13 AM PST by Thank You Rush ( )
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To: Kaslin

America’s Wake-up Call went off back in the 1960s.


5 posted on 12/29/2020 5:23:46 AM PST by Savage Beast (Donald Trump: An honest man in a world gone mad. God save us! May truth prevail!)
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To: Kaslin

Republican Free Traitors™ must have to have a come to Jesus moment and admit any possible economic advantage gained over the decades, decades of US worker misery, of offshoring and so called free trade was completely wiped out in 2020.


6 posted on 12/29/2020 5:29:14 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: Kaslin

Well the current death totals for this year are about the same as last year so there is major miracle that 300,000 people where healed and didn’t die this year. Also, Governors in about 5 state murdered about half of the 300,000 in nursing homes. Doctors killed a bunch because they kept intubating/respiratoring(sp) patients when it was obviously killing them. None seem to learn anything from prior sars virus medicine and treatments.


7 posted on 12/29/2020 5:54:02 AM PST by kvanbrunt2 (spooks won on day 76)
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To: Savage Beast

No the 1960s are when we were seduced.

Starting with the likes of “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, we didn’t hang traitors from that point on. We didn’t declare ‘war’ either, making this period of moral ambiguity which wore us down to this point where we don’t even enforce laws and attempt to have honest fair elections.

It is the elimination of standards.


8 posted on 12/29/2020 6:56:13 AM PST by Wildbill22 ( They have us surrounded again, the poor bastards- Gen Creighton William Abrams)
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To: Wildbill22

It is the elimination of standards.

And absolutes.


9 posted on 12/29/2020 6:57:09 AM PST by Wildbill22 ( They have us surrounded again, the poor bastards- Gen Creighton William Abrams)
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To: ronnie raygun

No....death knell, rather

The canary died way back


10 posted on 12/29/2020 7:23:41 AM PST by SMARTY (“If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.” Winston Churchill)
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To: Wildbill22
B I N G O!!!

Liberals think all they need is money to remake the world and set it straight... after THEIR image.

It was necessary to neutralize all and any obstacles presented by tradition and protocol.... law and rules....etc.

It proves JUST how stupid they are.

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today." Thomas Sowell

11 posted on 12/29/2020 7:35:55 AM PST by SMARTY (“If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.” Winston Churchill)
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To: Wildbill22
I was not seduced in the 1960s by the spoiled brats of the men who walked directly into machine gun fire on the beaches of Normandy, when they sashayed onto the world stage chanting "Sex! Drugs! and Rock-and-roll!" and "If it feels good, do it!"

I was not deceived by their self-serving claims of some "higher truth" or "new morality," which were obviously contrived, their "higher truth" being nothing more than untruth; their "new morality" being nothing more than immorality.

This was the eruption into the open of the decadence of Western Civilisation in America.

It was sick. It was a sign of a sickness in America. It has gotten worse.

The Supreme Court justices, in their December 11 decision, proved that they too have succumbed to the decadence.

Donald Trump believed that the decadence could be reversed, that the USA has not yet passed the point of no return. Whether he was right or not remains to be seen, but the corruption of Americas most venerated institutions, including the court system, is a bad sign.

12 posted on 12/29/2020 11:57:30 AM PST by Savage Beast (Donald Trump: An honest man in a world gone mad. God save us! May truth prevail!)
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To: Savage Beast

I agree 100%.


13 posted on 12/30/2020 5:44:21 AM PST by Wildbill22 ( They have us surrounded again, the poor bastards- Gen Creighton William Abrams)
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To: Savage Beast

And I was not seduced either, like many other patriots who I like to believe I deserve company with.


14 posted on 12/30/2020 5:47:06 AM PST by Wildbill22 ( They have us surrounded again, the poor bastards- Gen Creighton William Abrams)
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To: central_va

That’s what happens when you trade freely with America’s worst emerging enemy as though it was its closest ally, expecting all the while to come out of it smelling like a rose.

Here we were all worried that we would need to start learning Spanish or Arabic. Might as well learn Mandarin.


15 posted on 12/30/2020 5:58:10 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Hope is not a plan. -- Matthew Bracken)
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To: Kaslin
On Memorial Day weekend, a white police officer in Minneapolis was taped kneeling for nine minutes on the neck of a Black suspect.

Hours later, George Floyd would die, and his death would trigger protests against police brutality that quickly degenerated into radical and racial rioting unseen since the 1960s.

Yet, Joe Biden, who would be crushed in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary and lose Nevada to Bernie Sanders, would be rescued by a massive Black turnout in South Carolina.

How could the SC primary, which occurred at the end of February, be tied to Floyd's death, which happened months later?

The timeline is not correct here. Biden's primary victory in SC had nothing to do with the BLM George Floyd protests, as the article implies.

16 posted on 12/30/2020 6:07:15 AM PST by Jess Kitting
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