The Morning Briefing: Give Up Hope, All Ye Who Entered 2020—The Year Is Dead

The Little Year That Couldn’t

Happy Hump Day, dear Morning Briefing readers. This isn’t about any specific news item today. It’s more about creeping ennui I’ve been feeling about the rest of the year during the second round of shutdowns. Sure, it’s summertime and it has been blazing hot here in Arizona for what seems like months, but this listlessness I’m feeling is from the realization that I’m not going to be looking forward to anything for a while. The year is toast. We might be shut down until 2025 now.

Don’t blame me, I really to want to be more optimistic about the year. In fact, I even crowdsourced this on Twitter before I began writing. For the record, the Twitter faithful were in favor of me being either optimistic or agnostic. No one voted for pessimism.

Still, this year has been enough to suck the fun out of even me at times. And I am super pro-fun, even during plague years.

It’s not that there weren’t plenty of upsetting news stories to pick from yesterday. If I had to choose one, it would be the story about Bari Weiss leaving The New York Times. While it’s true that I always expect the worst from the Times, what’s been going on there in the past month is truly journalism’s death rattle in the U.S. There are a lot of things that are being canceled this year, and the Times has been purging any voice that isn’t far, far left.

This to me is more disturbing than the protesting brats in the streets. Their end game, of course, is the breakdown of our institutions, but most of those kids are impotent. What’s happening at the Times is a venerable institution breaking down before our eyes. But hey, 2020, right?

What’s got me going this time was yet another mask edict, this time in Oregon. This came a day after Gavin Newsom shut down things in California again. That came two weeks after we shut down a lot of things here in Arizona.

My gut feeling now tells me one of two things: if we do open back up we will be shut down again or we’re all done for the rest of the year.

When I discuss this with conservative friends they’re convinced that we won’t be shut down for the rest of the year, but just until after the election. Even if that is the case, most of the year is shot anyway.

One big reason that I think we’re done for the year is that the officials making decisions are still mostly winging it. We know more than we did about coronavirus now than we did in March, but it’s still largely a mystery. At this point it’s easier for elected officials to just keep things closed for the year than risk the bad publicity of opening up again and having to shut down a third time.

I watched my first baseball game of the year yesterday so you’d think I’d be more upbeat. Sure, it was just an intrasquad Dodgers game, but it was baseball. What I think will probably happen is that they’ll start playing, a few guys will test positive, and then MLB pulls the plug on the season. Same with the other sports.

So I’m done looking forward to things this year. I suppose I could look forward to next year, but there is no guarantee that this madness will be constrained by a calendar.

Let’s all meet back here next year at this time and pretend none of this ever happened, shall we?

Granny Maojackets Crawled Out of Her Box of Franzia and Said Stupid Stuff

True. She transcends pathetic.

It's just sad at this point

Hillary is still claiming the election was stolen from her pic.twitter.com/3ENcePyEJd

— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) July 14, 2020

He’ll Be the Next Democratic Nominee for President

Meet Jonathan, oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world. Came to life in 1832 & currently 188 years old pic.twitter.com/eQlxkQYakn

— Nature is Lit🔥 (@NaturelsLit) July 14, 2020

Bee Me

Global Warming Disaster: Dangerous Amounts Of Methane Released As Republicans Rush To Buy Goya Beans https://t.co/0lFRwRkXu5

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 14, 2020

The Kruiser Kabana

pic.twitter.com/MeEXxhmgiH

— Archillect (@archillect) July 15, 2020

I don’t remember if I’ve used this before (going to have to start cataloging these things) but I love it. The video is shaky but it’s worth it. The interview with Carson after is good too.

How’s everyone else’s COVID time loop going?

___

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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.