This year has brought out the best in people and the worst in people. The COVID-19 Pandemic has pushed some people to the brink with the loss of a job, friend, or family member. Too many people have experienced more loss and grief this year than in many years of the past years.
The negative emotions that people have been expected to process are overwhelming. Adding to the overload of feelings and emotions this year has been nothing short of cruel. In a time when people might be better served by finding intimacy in their relationships, some would rather inflict intimidation on others.
The political climate of this country has led to the division that many people talk about in terms of being unprecedented and unrelenting. The bullying, harassment, and threatening of people seem to have become commonplace and as such draw little if any outrage or pushback.
People are already so worried, fearful, and anxious about how 2020 has impacted their way of life. The normalcy of their lives when 2020 started was replaced with uncertainty and challenges previously not all experienced at one time.
More and more people are finding themselves the victims of intimidation based on who they voted for in the past election, or worse yet for their gender, race, or ethnicity. Not since 1964, when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was ratified, has so much unrest interrupted many people’s lives.
Political LEADERS have a responsibility to model the behaviors that encourage others to feel safe and secure in this country, in 2020 it would seem that many if not most on both sides of the aisle have failed miserably. The overall lack of focused action to address the Coronavirus on a health or financial crisis basis has left millions of hard-working people without jobs, without the financial resources to provide food and housing for themselves and their families. The threats that people will live with daily might have been avoided had the appropriate actions been taken earlier on in 2020.
LEADERS might have made a positive difference in the lives of the American people if only they had Found the Facts, Followed their Hearts, and Forgotten the Rhetoric. Instead, too many of them ignored the science, acted with indifference, and added nonsense to the narrative.
When LEADERS Find the Facts and make decisions based on them, they create outcomes like those in countries like Australia and New Zealand. As of mid-December Australia has reported less than 1000 deaths as a result of the coronavirus, while New Zealand has reported 25. The USA has reported 315,000 deaths attributed to the coronavirus.
Health intimidation is real.
When LEADERS Follow their Hearts and put people’s lives above greed and profit, they give people the sense that their lives are meaningful. The wealth gap has been widened in mindblowing ways during the COVID-19 Pandemic with the richest people in the USA adding billions of dollars to their pockets, while the numbers of people who are unable to pay rent or buy food have skyrocketed.
Financial intimidation is real.
When LEADERS Forget the Rhetoric and apply integrity and logic to their decisions, people are better served when it comes to moving out of the constraints that the COVID-19 Pandemic has inflicted on them. The blind eye or a deaf ear in the worst experience for most Americans is unconscionable and yet it has been allowed to go on for nearly a year. LEADERS who believe that the American people are capable of following the simple directions have lost touch with reality, and have sadly contributed to the staggering number of coronavirus cases and deaths.
Food intimidation is real.
As people move into the new year and hope for a better experience in 2021, it is clear that the negative effects of 2020 will linger well beyond December 31. People have been let down by LEADERS in ways that will take a very long to overcome all the while bringing in new LEADERS to model Following the Facts, Following their Hearts, and Forgetting the Rehortic.
While Hope is not a strategy, it is sadly one of the few things people have to hold onto as they move out of 2020 with visible and invisible scars of the effects of the multitudes of Initidmaition that they experienced.
Moving from Intimidation to Intimacy is going to take a massive amount of Resilience, which will more than likely come from those who have endured and suffered the most throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic.
As a result of 2020 and the COVID-19 Pandemic, a new model for LEADERS will surely emerge to give us all hope for the future.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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