It has been an unusual CNY (Chines New Year) festive celebration in these Covid19 times. We have been a year into the first lockdown and the world is still grappling with changes in the new normal as the vaccine rollout slowly gains momentum.
Here in our country, the situation has been much better than in most other places as the authorities have been successful in preventing new waves from overwhelming the systems via proactive contact tracing and compulsory mask-wearing. The size of a group gathering has been slowly relaxed since last July to 8 persons now. The fear of CNY visitations causing another wave has meant that tighter restrictions on reunion dinners and social gathering at homes needed to be adopted.
While we had to follow these new rulings since 26 Jan, our family decided to adjust accordingly. As we have more than 8 persons for our reunion dinner, the wife suggested that we split the dinner into 2 groups to be held in 2 separate households. All the adults went to my parents’ apartment while the kids gathered at my place. We used our iPads to FaceTime both groups to do a realtime interactive Loh Hei and steamboat dinner. It turned out to be quite successful and we enjoyed the unique planning required to make this annual event happen.
Today is day 2 of CNY and all households are allowed only 8 visitors per day. There goes the multiple family visits which we are used to every year. We all had to work around the situation and prepare timetables for each of the next 14 days of CNY. Most of us decided to do visits before the start of the CNY holidays too. We settled on more intimate small gatherings to spend better quality time together with the various important people in our lives due to this constraint.
I realized that all of us have not had the chance to have many late nights now as nightspots have been totally closed and restaurants cannot operate beyond 1030 pm. The air smells fresher nowadays as there is less pollution from commercial airlines and transportation. The swing to extreme cold weather may be Mother Gaia’s response to grasping the opportunity to repair itself for the past 12 months. Most people are getting used to the long periods of time spent at home and mindful of new ways to get things done while having more quality family time.
After the Myanmar military coup last week, we had the 2nd Trump impeachment trial to keep us occupied. The evidence provided by the prosecutors were very compelling, giving moment by moment breakdown of what happened on the fateful day of 06 Jan at the Capitol.
It was obvious that he had been inciting the protestors for months on the big lie that the elections were stolen and inviting them to come down on that date to show their displeasure by storming the House. Thankful, it went the way it did with minimal casualties due to a few lucky decisions which prevented face to face confrontations of the mob with the senators which could have ended with many more hurt or killed.
The GOP seems to be imploding into itself again as they put party before country and aim to acquit the orange one by not voting with the Democrats even after this trial. He couldn’t even hire decent lawyers to put up a credible defence as most better ones turned him down when approached. It could also be that he is confident that there will not be enough votes to acquit him. Instead of the 16 hours of time they were given, they did it in 3 hours on Fri. The sloppy presentation was a laughing stock and embarrassing to watch.
There are now still so many in the GOP who still refuse to acknowledge the facts being presented and insist that it is not constitutional to impeach an ex-president. They have effectively condoned his actions and given future presidents a free pass to commit mayhem into the final weeks of their presidency. Is it not clear enough that he had thrown the whole senate under the bus by sending an aggressive mob towards them and not lifting a finger for hours to stop the danger that was storming the Capitol?
It seems like there are less than 30% of GOP members that can identify with the old values of the party nowadays. The radical right is now dominating it and most of the senators need to cultivate this group in order to stay in power. But many members have also quit the party in disgust, giving more voice to the kooks who believe in conspiracies more than facts. Some senators are finally standing up now to agree with the impeachment process but it may be too late. A group of 120 ex and current GOP members had a call recently to decide if they want to break away and form a new 3rd party instead.
The demise of the GOP is looking to be upon us soon. If they do not cut away the cancer that the orange one is promoting, they can never get back to the conservative ways which they stand for, to be replaced by hate and radical views that are not the norm nor what America represents. The disorganized party is now battling with calling truth lies and lies becoming truth. This basic inability to differentiate lies and truth questions the moral authority of the GOP to become a credible party in the future.
Things will surely come to a head very soon as this combustible and toxic environment cannot go on forever. It seems like a trend that Republican presidents tend to blow up the economy (ie. Bush in 2008 GFC and now Trump in 2020) in time for the Democrat president to clean up the mess (Obama and Biden). The American political pendulum continues to swing from right to left and then back again all the time. Freedom of choice over stability. Is the definition of Democracy the right to burn down the house periodically in order to build a new house and is it such a good thing after all?
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