2020 began with promise, it seemed that Novel COVID would be contained overseas, but on a birthday trip of mine March 1st-15th of that year I would be in the last group to see a public launch of a rocket at Cape Canaveral, Disneyworld would close its gates behind us for the whole spring season and then on March 11th I went to a crowded Lauderdale Beach and thought it might be for the last time. The city of my birth, I have elderly relatives on both sides of the family there and was not sure I would lose some or if I might even perish myself, it was really scary. In Pokemon Go I caught a buizel there who would be my buddy to remind me of the Florida I knew but was not sure I would ever see again and had my favorite artists draw art of him to fill my gallery.

My family would all make it through, but the novel strain of COVID would take friends of mine or their relatives before vaccines came out, and later Delta would continue to take the lives of more acquaintances, but only from those who chose not to vaccinate for various personal reasons despite their being free, safe and available here in the US.

My country's own lying tyrant would lose to Joe Biden and then refuse to leave office just as predicted, his lies inciting a riot that spilled blood on the floor of our capitol and he is even now weakening us with his lies, amplified by a propaganda news service to this day. Meanwhile a lost political party wants to bring him back no matter what crimes he is charged with because, like a genie, he was able to undo sensible regulation and long standing precedents against the will of the majority of Americans, leaving the environment dirtier, the rich richer, the poor poorer and more dead from COVID than there could have been.

Let’s also not forget that he tried to hold up supplying defensive weapons already approved for Ukraine as a bargaining chip just to get their president Zelensky to lie for him by saying there was an ongoing investigation on Joe Biden’s son to influence the election by tarring his opponent. It was a brazen and despicable act for which he was impeached a second time and it did not work for reasons we know now after seeing what Zelensky is capable of rising above.

And now Putin, who held off of his expansionist plans to give Trump the best chance at election so that together they could weaken NATO, decided that the time was ripe to invade his neighbor and subsequently, after a terrible miscalculation of the response, 30 years of developing an integrated economy was shattered in a week.

I have to say I am so glad Biden won, even though he might not be the right man at the right time, he's what we have and I would far prefer an old political codger who listens to his advisors to a sociopathic real estate developer and cock-sleeve to Putin who doesn't. The result is that Biden has unified NATO instead of weakening it and together they are doing everything short of triggering a world war to help the plucky people of Ukraine.

Where do we go from here?

I hope I’m wrong but I think I know how this might play out, Putin takes heavy losses but subjugates the Ukraine, it looks like Moldova is next because it’s easy pickings. Then he declares the sanctions to be an act of war and threatens the west with nuclear bombardment unless we remove them which we do in order to preserve the future of multicellular life on the planet. Bad guy wins. I sure as hell hope not.