The year 2020 will be remembered for many reasons, few of them good. But among the fires, floods, locusts, and other natural disasters, two tsunamis have swept the country and the world, unequaled in a generation. The first, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (COVID-19), the other is a groundswell of support for racial justice unequaled in breadth and impact since the civil rights movement over a half-century ago. Both have been met with breathtaking indifference and incompetence by a federal government whose three branches have been rendered virtually powerless by the small-minded machinations of a reactionary minority.

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