{"id":2271,"date":"2020-12-15T08:16:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T08:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=139354"},"modified":"2020-12-15T08:16:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T08:16:28","slug":"2020-im-so-sick-of-superlatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/15\/2020-im-so-sick-of-superlatives\/","title":{"rendered":"2020: I\u2019m So Sick of Superlatives"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201c2020: The Worst Year Ever,\u201d reads the cover of Time magazine\u2019s December 14 issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been worse years in U.S. history,\u201d admits author Stephanie Zacharek, but not, to her way of thinking, since World War Two.  Between a heavy hurricane and fire season, police violence and the accompanying protests, a circus of a presidential election, and a global pandemic, Zacharek opines, none but the oldest among us can remember a year nearly as bad.<\/p>\n

Just how bad a given year was is, of course, a matter of opinion, but Zacharek\u2019s opinion on 2020 strikes me as overwrought in a way that\u2019s becoming increasingly typical of whiny American poor-us-ism.<\/p>\n

Lately it seems everything has to be described in a superlative manner. Natural disaster. War. Police violence. Political craziness. You name it, we just can\u2019t seem to accept that it\u2019s part of a continuum. Everything absolutely, positively must be the mostest or the worstest of its kind, ever.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember World War Two. I don\u2019t even remember 1968. But that particular year lived on in our collective memory strongly enough, for long enough, that I remember (and sometimes still see) the shudders of those who lived through it.  Some high points:<\/p>\n

In January, nearly 400 people died and thousands were injured in an earthquake in Sicily. North Korean forces seized the USS Pueblo. The Tet Offensive began in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

In February, police killed three students at a civil rights protest in Orangeburg, South Carolina.<\/p>\n

In March, American troops murdered somewhere between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

On April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots ensued.<\/p>\n

In May, seven weeks of mass unrest began in France and at least 46 tornadoes struck At least 46 tornadoes struck ten US states in one night, killing dozens  and injuring thousands.<\/p>\n

In June, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, California.<\/p>\n

July saw the first recorded cases in the 1968 H3N2 flu epidemic, which killed somewhere between 1 million and 4 million worldwide and as many as 100,000 in the United States (no, not as many as COVID-19, but the population of the US was less than 2\/3 what it is now). It also saw four days of rioting in Cleveland, Ohio after a four-hour gun battle between police and the Black Nationalists of New Libya left seven dead.<\/p>\n

In August, more than 200 died in an earthquake in the Philippines, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, and police rioted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, abducting and injuring hundreds.<\/p>\n

In October, soldiers opened fire on a protest in Mexico City, killing between 350 and 400, and 30 years of \u201cThe Troubles\u201d kicked off after police in Derry, (Northern) Ireland,  truncheoned civil rights protesters.<\/p>\n

Yes, 2020 has been a pretty crappy year, but let\u2019s try to keep a little perspective here. There\u2019s never been a year that some people didn\u2019t think \u2014 at the time \u2014 was the worse year ever. And even if you can\u2019t think of a single good thing about 2020 right now, I can point at least one out for you: It\u2019s almost over.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c2020: The Worst Year Ever,\u201d reads the cover of Time magazine\u2019s December 14 issue. \u201cThere have been worse years in U.S. history,\u201d admits author Stephanie Zacharek, but not,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2272,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions\/2272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}