June 10, 2020: The best thing I've read this week

What a year 2020 has been -- and we are only half way through it.  

The year began with the impeachment proceedings of Donald Trump. The U.S. attacked Iran. Coronavirus began in China, then Europe and finally hit the U.S. with a blow that knocked out the economy and sent us home from school and work. A record number of Americans -- tens of millions -- became unemployed. More than 100,000 American died of Covid-19 as Trump claimed victory over the virus. The nation's doors were kicked open, perhaps prematurely,  with the bang of massive protests necessitated by continued police brutality against black men. (I'd be doing a disservice, here, to ignore that that brutality did not happen in a vacuum. Racism is inherent in this nation as further evidenced in the grisly murder of Ahmaud Armery, a young black man out for a job when he was hunted down by armed men in a pickup truck.) The protests got ugly in Minneapolis, Seattle and, namely, D.C. when Trump had Park Police fire tear gas into a peaceful crowd so he could stage a photo op in front of a church. 

Here we are, almost halfway through an election year. I fear it will only get uglier and scarier. 

This story from Columbia Journalism Review looks at life in death in the last six months. 

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