{"id":9797,"date":"2020-01-01T12:33:46","date_gmt":"2020-01-01T17:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=9797"},"modified":"2020-01-01T12:33:46","modified_gmt":"2020-01-01T17:33:46","slug":"the-roaring-twenties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=9797","title":{"rendered":"The roaring twenties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A year ago today, I was <a href=\"\/weblog\/?p=9371\">looking forward to 2019<\/a> with skepticism. I expressed concern about a number of things. Not everything unfolded according to my expectations, and that&#8217;s good news. What can I say, I hope 2020 will continue the trend of defying pessimistic predictions.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9798\" src=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small.jpg 480w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small-96x96.jpg 96w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small-24x24.jpg 24w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small-48x48.jpg 48w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/roaring-twenties-small-64x64.jpg 64w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The political crisis in the United States continues to simmer with Trump&#8217;s impeachment, but it remains less dramatic than I feared;<\/li>\n<li>NATO and the EU remain intact for now, though unresolved issues remain;<\/li>\n<li>An orderly Brexit is now possible with Johnson&#8217;s election victory; I still think the Brits are shooting themselves in the foot with this idiocy, but an orderly Brexit may be the best possible outcome at this point;<\/li>\n<li>Sliding towards authoritarianism in places like Hungary and Poland remains a grave concern, but there is also pushback;<\/li>\n<li>Russia continues to muck up things in untoward ways, but there was no significant (e.g., military) escalation;<\/li>\n<li>China is ramping up its campaign against the Uyghurs with an ever widening system of concentration camps but there was no significant escalation with respect to their neighbors;<\/li>\n<li>Japan, sadly, resumed whaling, but so far I believe the impact is minimal;<\/li>\n<li>Brazil continues to wreak havoc in the rain forest, but there is pushback here as well;<\/li>\n<li>Lastly, Canada did have elections, but populism was crushed (for now at least) with the defeat of Maxime Bernier&#8217;s People&#8217;s Party.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And now here we are, entering the roaring twenties! A decade that will bring things like Prohibition and organized crime in the United States, institutionalized antisemitism in Hungary, the rise of fascism in Italy, the Great Depression&#8230; no, wait, that was a century ago. Here&#8217;s to hoping that humanity got a little wiser in the past 100 years.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of that century, my wife&#8217;s Mom and mine can now both tell us that they lived in every decade of a century, having been born in the 30&#8217;s and now living in the 20&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=9797' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A year ago today, I was looking forward to 2019 with skepticism. I expressed concern about a number of things. Not everything unfolded according to my expectations, and that&#8217;s good news. What can I say, I hope 2020 will continue the trend of defying pessimistic predictions. The political crisis in the United States continues to <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=9797' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,50,25,35,5,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-environment","category-history","category-personal","category-politics","category-pop-culture","category-22-id","category-50-id","category-25-id","category-35-id","category-5-id","category-31-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9797"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9801,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797\/revisions\/9801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}