Zero 3: Some Final Thoughts on 2022 Before We Move On

Here's to another crap year.

Honestly, each topic on this list can easily be the subject of their own edition of FrogScorpia. But, it’s 2023, we on that new shit.

So, I’m going to suppress every urge in me not to spew out a couple thousand words for each.

Let’s start with the absurd.

Ukrainian Clean Up Raves

In a year that was almost defined by the waves felt in the wake of the Ukrainian War, you can almost be excused for overlooking the absolute weirdness of it all. While we felt the geopolitical tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet in realtime, in what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz calls Zeitenwende - war was changing.

If the Arab Spring was Twitter’s coming out party, the Ukrainian War was TikTok’s. Between investigative journalist groups teaching each other how to use the app to more effectively report on the war, to citizens using the app to organize clean up efforts. Through TikTok, groups of Ukrainian citizens, along with people from outside the country, including from here in the States, gathered to not only clear rubble from the streets and preserve some semblance of normalcy for the residents - but to also dance their tits off to some thumping bass!

DJ Oleksandr Buchinskiy’s mission was two-front: help the people of Yahidne, a small village northeast of Kyiv, and preserve the nation’s vibrant club scene. The result? 200 plus people, dancing, grooving, in the middle of bombed out streets, cleaning up the chaos.

@viceworldnewsRavers in Ukraine put on a daytime party as part of a volunteer effort to help clear up bombed out buildings in Yahidne, northern Ukraine. A couple hundred people helped out, hoping it would make their summer feel a bit more “normal”. #rave #party #ukrainian #ukraine

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What a sight to behold.

Unfortunately, as we approach the one year anniversary of the War in Ukraine, it’ll most likely remain a hot topic.

2023 as 2014.

The “Stop Woke” Act

It’s hard to avoid the hackneyed sentiment that “Florida’s gonna Florida”. Or, to dismiss any real damage they can do to our democracy or public discourse because of the state’s trancendant buffoonery. It should be a point of shame for any Floridian that the Florida Man meme exists. That any of us can randomly type in our birthday plus “Florida” into Google and be presented with a risible tale of debauchery. But underneath the crust of mayhem is the testing grounds for the Post-T****p Republican Party. One that can carry on his hateful rhetoric, but with a group of people who actually understand the intricacies of governance.

Last spring Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the Individual Freedom Act. The law, which prohibits

workplace training or school instruction that teaches that individuals are “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”; that people are privileged or oppressed based on race, gender, or national origin; or that a person “bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” over actions committed in the past by members of the same race, gender, or national origin. The law says such trainings or lessons amount to discrimination.

according to Time Magazine. The law has been a lightening rod for the right. Politicians and pundits from across the nation used talking points from it to galvanize their base (Bases being whipped up into a frenzy was kinda a theme this year).

The language of the law, others argued, impeded on the free speech of educators and employers.

In August a federal judge issued an injunction that temporary blocked officials in Florida from enforcing the new law. The injunction (seen in part below) begins by referencing Stranger Things. A factoid that isn’t even the weirdest thing about all of this. You can read the full injunction here.

The Shutting Down of Memorial in Russia

Even though this was late 2021, I don’t feel as though it was talked about enough in 2022.

On December 21, 2021 Russian courts agrees to dissolve Memorial, the country’s oldest human rights organization. An organization tasked with, among other things, maintaining a catalog of those killed during the Stalin-era “Great Terror”.

The dissolution of the organization, to me, mirrored our country’s battle against its past. Namely the erasure of civil rights struggles and the racist foundation our nation is built on. The condemnation of things like the 1619 Project by the right wing of our government, or the passing of the Individual Freedoms Act mentioned earlier, mirrors the continued Russian attempts at rewriting (or rather suppressing) its own history.

Yet, when it comes to Russia we continue to sit high on our horses. Appalled at what a nation can do to its people…

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Presidential Victory

While the recent storming of Brazil’s Congress by supporters of right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro is rightfully grabbing the headlines right now, we can’t let it overshadow how huge Luiz Lula da Silva’s victory is.

The attack eerily echos the Riot at our own Capitol Building two years ago, though can it be described as “eerie” when it was telegraphed months ago? I need to find the footage, but I could’ve sworn I watched an interview with Bolsonaro, in the lead up to the Brazilian election, talking about the American insurrection attempt as a template for what could happen in his own country if he’s not reelected.

Planting the seeds of destruction months in advance. A play we’ve seen all too often in the post-T***p years. Rile up your base to a fever, but leave yourself enough room for plausible deniability. Beyond a failed politician vaguely threatening violence in response to their inevitable loss, the bigger news should be Lula’s victory.

Lula served two successful terms as president between 2003-2010, during this time Lula’s administration ushered in a wide berth of new social welfare programs helping the most impoverished in the country - one of the programs Bolsa Família captivated my own imagination, wondering how a version of it can work in America. An idea I’ll probably return to later at some point.

After his second term, he was incarcerated, swept up in a wave of corruption scandals thrown at the government. Lula’s imprisonment was obviously political, so much so that the country’s Supreme Court ordered his release in 2019, a year after his incarceration, and annulled all charges against him. With the Bernie Sanders-esque president now back in the driver’s seat to one of the world’s largest economies, its exciting to see what he and his administration will do for the country’s poorest. Hopefully continue the work to raise them to Brazil’s growing middle class.

Slavery on the Ballot in Five States in 2022

On November 8th voters in Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and Alabama voted on whether or not to remove stipulations in their states’ constitution that allows for involuntary servitude as a punishment for incarcerated people. In other words, in 2022 five states of the US still allowed slavery to be a punishment for those who committed a crime.

Now, I don’t need to tell you how disproportionally the US incarcerates black and brown people compared to other races, or that black and brown folk regularly get tougher sentences for the same crimes, as compared to people of other races.

If a system previously relied on a certain section of its populace as the engine of its economy, it benefits the system to retain some aspects of this old way, in light of moral reforms. In other words, a way to keep “slaves”, without keeping “slavery”.

The vote, regardless of the outcome, is a glaring indictment on our country. The fact that this wasn’t reported on widely, or discussed ad nauseam on network television is maddening.

FIVE STATES STILL HAD SLAVES. IN 2022. DON’T HIDE THAT BEHIND RHETORIC OR ALTERNATIVE LABELING. THESE PEOPLE WERE SLAVES. FULL STOP.

Don’t talk to me about post-anything if we can’t be honest about our present, let alone our past.

I was debating adding another section entitled The Lies of George Santos, but I don’t want to give that bum any more of a spotlight.

Though the idea that someone can wholly create themselves while on the campaign trail and still get elected to office, all without a clear path towards removal once their lies are uncovered tickles that cynical part of my brain in a why that only a Beau Willimon-written script can.

It’s amazing. And horrifying.

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Farewell 2020 part 2. Or was this 2016 part 6? Or, 2014 part 8? I’ve lost track.

This has been a year of inflated tragedy. The personal kinds that if listed, wouldn’t be plausible as a storyline on a television show. Most were quietly tolerated, through I guess, a learned resolve. Others, if you knew where to look, were deafening.

Through the hardened skin we’ve developed over the past almost-decade, hopefully we can navigate the weirdness ahead of us in a healthier way than our coping mechanisms have allowed us to so far.

Here’s to 2023.