Another year is about to reach its conclusion, with the start of the new year. It seems that each year I keep wishing for times to be less interesting, but it's getting obvious that this wish is not going to be granted any year soon.
Once again, President Trump has had an interesting year, culminating with the House voting to impeach him. However, the House has yet to deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate, where the resulting trial is supposed to take place. While the Congress won't give the president one cent for building a wall on our southern border, they seem to have agreed to spend record amounts of money on just about everything else, which has continued to drive up the national debt. While illegal immigration continues to be a problem, the U.S. has decided to take in fewer refugees.
In some ways, 2019 was an ominous year, such as by having a record number of mass shootings. While gun control advocates would use these shootings to argue their positions, one recent incident in White Settlement, Texas showed that a good guy with a gun can prevent a bad guy from doing more harm than he did. Another recent development is the spate of attacks on American Jews, particularly in New York City.
Politically, numerous Democrats have started to contend for their party's presidential nomination for next year's presidential election, with some of them dropping out. It seems that Americans could deny white billionaire Donald Trump a second term, and replace him with white billionaire Michael Bloomberg or white billionaire Tom Steyer. Or we could replace the old white guy named Trump with an even older white guy named Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden.
The year has been interesting for many different parts of the world. Bolivian president Evo Morales was ousted from office. The United Kingdom re-elected Prime Minister Boris Johnson (whom I like to call "the Spider") and gave him a majority large enough to finally carry out Brexit. After some wheeling and dealing, Spain appears close to finally having a new government. The coalition which had formed Italy's government kicked out one party and brought in another, which resulted in anti-migration politician Matteo Salvini losing the office of Interior Minister. In Israel, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his rival Benny Gantz could form a government, which will lead to another round of elections. India also had elections in 2019, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected and given an increased majority in parliament. The Indian government also enacted two controversial policies, first in dividing the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two territories, and second by amending its Citizenship Act to provide a path to citizenship for non-Muslims who entered India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The latter has resulted in widespread protests.
Speaking of protests, they have been going on in Hong Kong ever since China proposed to extradite suspected criminals out of the territory to the mainland to face trial. Again speaking of protests, 2019 saw a large number of protests related to climate change, but as far as I know, none of them got anywhere near any embassy or consulate of China, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide. (I concede that the linked information was most recently reported for 2015. If anyone knows of any more recent information, feel free to link it in a comment.) Speaking of climate change, the climate change believers found a mascot in Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who spoke to the United Nations. While she seems to speak English quite well, I would suggest that she learns how to say "How dare you" in Chinese. Speaking of China, the country has also been noted for running detention camps for the Uighur people in the province of Xinjiang.
The year 2019 saw the deaths of many notable people. The list includes singer/actor Doris Day; businessman/politician Ross Perot; actors Peter Mayhew (who played Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies), Peggy Lipton, Carol Channing, Tim Conway, Rip Torn, Valery Harper, Diahann Carroll and Peter Fonda; football player Bart Starr; baseball player/author Jim Bouton; musicians Peter Tork, Leon Redbone, Eddie Money, Ric Ocasek, Ginger Baker and Malcolm Rebennack (known as Dr. John); and Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings (D).
In my own life, I have continued to some extent along the same course as in the previous year. Once again I have done a lot of driving and have managed to avoid airplane travel. I drove the new Bigfootmobile all the way to northern Missouri, and also down into Virginia to visit my siblings and their families, which is somewhat different now that our parents are no longer here. I also got more into hiking this year, which is good because Sasquatches are supposed to walk through forests. And for the second time in my life, I get to brag that Miss America is an alumna of Virginia Tech.
Naturally, all of the above are merely the things that I can remember or look up on the Interwebs. There are obviously many other stories from 2019 that might deserve a mention, probably more than I could write about in a single post. To all who read this blog, may you and yours have a happy and safe New Year. I have a feeling that the times we live in will continue to be interesting.
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