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COLUMN: 2021 – a cautionary future

"The question for the American body politic and press is whether the country will start to breathe fresh air again in 2021, and whether President Biden will be successful in providing a nation-wide balm of Gilead’s potency."
Murdock Alan-col
Columnist Alan Murdock

What a pity that President Trump has always ignored what has preceded him in all things. Otherwise he might have found inspiration and perspective in John Milton’s poem On His Blindness.

Milton lost his sight working for a short-lived English Republican government. Of course, Milton’s use of the word “considered” is more reflective of rational thought than an emotional reaction, and soon-to-be former President Trump reacts to the world around him with emotionally charged intuition. Further, the word “light’ as it is written in the sonnet might also suggest intelligence. No further comment necessary.

But that is soon to be in the past. Surely former President Trump will ‘strut and fret upon the stage’ of America until he runs out of everyone else’s money – but eventually he will be ‘heard no more’. The question for the American body politic and press is whether the country will start to breathe fresh air again in 2021, and whether President Biden will be successful in providing a nation-wide balm of Gilead’s potency.

Thankfully, 2021 will see the slow but steady retreat of COVID-19. The path to recovery will be an uphill one, but we will get there – probably by October.

The fallout will be significant. Emptying downtown business towers may well be repurposed to residential suites as more of us work at home, bringing with them the revitalization of inner city life after dark. Online shopping will predominate our purchasing patterns. Wholesale reliance on China and India for household commodities will continue, but the world’s dependence on them for pharmaceutical and healthcare supplies will begin to reverse. The battle between the Big Five American technology companies and Chinese government sponsored 5G companies (e.g. Huawei) will split the world communications networking systems into two camps. The world’s stock markets will shift in their top business listings but will not crash.

Healthcare-wise, politicians in western countries will continue to pay lip service to improving health protection and safety measures for long-term care residents, but will do nothing except to be more careful in design construction and staffing of new residential facilities.  

The world will start to do something significant about global environmental improvement – except China and India. And they will get away with it.   

Britain will fade away from relevance. The European Union will survive but we will miss Angela Merkel. Meanwhile, Sinocentral dictatorial tokenism controlled by Emperor Xi Jinping will spread throughout the Belt and Road complex of participating nations. India will descend further into Hindu sectarian dictatorship. Millennia-persistent Middle East conflicts will suffer into further chaos for Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. South and Central America will remain much the same – politically and economically unstable. COVID-19, tuberculosis and malaria will continue to plague Africa as political chaos, famine and corruption persist. 

In Canada, an imbalance between funding sources and suppliers of public services by provincial and municipal governments will become more politically charged – particularly with changing social, recreational and infrastructure priorities and demands. Ottawa will meddle for political gain.

We will be going to the polls federally by year-end caused by the Prime Minister’s Office tenacious dictatorial incompetence.

Canada will continue to be a nice afterthought on the world stage.  

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