[RL Politics] Photo of the Year 2020

Day 4,793, 02:38 Published in USA Chile by Wilker Nath

Those of you who I still talk to on discord know well that I am dangerously close to just saying "fuck it" and phasing out what little activity I still have. Something happened this week, though. I saw an article from someone who, until recently, appeared to also be teetering on the edge of putting down this dumb game. This article was a call out for some activity in the media module once again.

I'll be nice and not try to associate RL politics with Guild of Writers, but I'll probably be supporting that effort in the future, and I may start writing more often here (we'll see).

So let's start with some tunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntDnwBiORu8

It's a Billie Holiday morning. Here's a rare cover of "Blue Moon"

Who sung it better?
Frank Sinatra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw1ZC6sZjIY

The Marcels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0fy1HeJv80
This one's a little too "Beach Boys" for me. I think they butchered it.

Elvis Presley???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiY5auB3OWg

Anyway, to the meat and potatoes.

Why I'm doing this? Here's the reason:



Like, really? Let's count the problems.
1: 2 people?
2: Joe BIDEN???
3: how is a pair of neolibs changing anything about the structure of this country?
4: they couldn't think of anyone better...... Even just outside the realm of American politics there are some good candidates.

That is a joke. I think most common places on the political spectrum can even agree with me, right or left, this is just a huge joke. So I'm gonna nominate, not a person of the year, but a photo of the year, just for fun and just for all of our entertainment. Let's prove that just any old dumbass on the internet can do a better job than Time Magazine 2020 staff at recognizing something that is or will become iconic of a specific year.

So without further ado, here's my pick for "Photo of the Year 2020":



This photo was taken on August 1, 2020. This photo depicts the two co-owners of Atilis gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey kicking down the plywood blocking the doors to their own building.

If you haven't heard the story (link includes video of the kicking) already, you can probably guess at it. These 2 guys own a gym in NJ. Governor told them to shut down because of Covid. They refused. At some point the State put physical barriers to prevent people from entering the building. The owners removed those barriers using their feet.

The story includes a little more than that including actual arrests of both gym staff and customers, and over $1m in fines, but that's the gyst of it. According to the website, the gym is still open.

I picked this not because of some tribal affiliation, but because I think it's a good snapshot to make people understand the conflicts that came up between regular people and their neighbors during this past year. It's a photo that's likely to get put in a history book next to the 2020 covid19 footnote. It's something that at least someone will remember past the week or so that the attention span of the average news-watcher has been cut down to.

Someone 50 or 100 years from now sitting in a high school classroom can see this photo with little context and understand on some level that:
1: governments tried to implement lockdowns, including trying to shut down businesses like gyms and restaurants
2: people resisted, doors were kicked down, and presumably court battles were fought over it

This photo is also a door into a number of other sub-topics from this year. A high school classroom discussing this photo can easily segue into talking about masks, curfews, the vaccine, hospital capacity, government disease-prevention tactics, and the likely human response from such tactics. In hindsight of 2020 and 2021, there will be a lot of comparing and contrasting that can be done between different locations and the extent to which their governments responded to the virus, as well as how effective each was. This photo is a neat and tidy way to "sum it all up."



Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed, and I hope, even if you think a better photo could've been chosen, you at least agree that the Time person of the year this year is a tonedeaf waste.

You may now proceed to rip each other's limbs off in the comments. As you do, though, here's some more smooth sounds from Billie Holiday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9HvChXk


Stay Jazzy
o>