Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true. -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1850)
Seldom can a New Year be more welcome than the coming one, given the 365 often miserable days that led to it: Americans endured an invasion of their Capitol, defeat in Afghanistan and, most awful of all, an ever-longer list of lives ended by COVID-19.
So welcome, 2022: We’ve been waiting for you because, as Tennyson also wrote, “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come.” And smile many Clevelanders will, because, if anything is characteristic of us, it’s a conviction that better times beckon and usually arrive.
Human history is a cavalcade of advances, most obviously – but not just – in scientific and technical matters. The development in near-record time of vaccines to prevent or at least weaken COVID-19 is one example. Likewise, women and men have fashioned new ways of working and of learning to elude the viral enemy. Those approaches may not all be ideal, but humankind is nothing if not adaptable, as 2021 – for all its challenges – showed yet again.
The outgoing year, unlamented as it is, also demonstrated the courage and nobility of Greater Clevelanders in risking their lives – in hospitals, clinics and vaccination sites – to save the lives of others. Can there be any more powerful illustration that adversity, yes, even amid sorrow, inspires self-sacrifice? Awful as 2021 was, the virtue it mustered among us is edifying.
On the political front, Cleveland opened a new era by electing Justin Bibb as the city’s mayor, succeeding retiring Mayor Frank Jackson, who served a record 16 years during his four terms. Bibb’s inauguration likely marks a generational shift in how City Hall will address Cleveland’s challenges – new thinking for a new era, a bracing contrast to the wheel-spinning and bombast characteristic of Congress and of Ohio’s General Assembly.
True, there’s no disguising the challenges that arose in 2021 and will be with us again in 2022. The pandemic remains a matter of life and death. But our democracy is also at grave risk unless we can – as we have before – address our differences with words, not mayhem.
This coming new year will be the 246th of American independence. But likely at no time since the Civil War has conflict so stressed our politics. If there’s one New Year’s resolution we all should make and keep, it’s to listen more, and shout less, in trying to accommodate the often congruent but sometimes conflicting dreams of the 332 million people who make up the United States.
Such a resolution will be tested not just by COVID-19′s continued rampages but also by midterm elections whose likely ill will and unpleasantness are already being previewed in the Ohio GOP primary race for outgoing Sen. Rob Portman’s Senate seat.
Meanwhile, the ongoing criminal prosecutions arising from the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and the continuing congressional probes into that event are unlikely to provide the closure many seek. Instead, they could deepen the rancor and finger-pointing as former President Donald Trump continues to test the waters for a retry at the presidency in 2024.. Adding to potential divisions will be the Supreme Court’s anticipated ruling next spring in an abortion case that could overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
On the world stage, serious conflicts threaten not just militarily -- with the Russians massing troops near Ukraine, China’s naval build-up around Taiwan and Iran’s nuclear ambitions -- but also geopolitically, over trade, as U.S.-China tensions rise and as already-challenged global supply chains continue to be squeezed by pandemic trends. More corrosively, COVID inequities and hardships, including in vaccine access, are contributing to instability worldwide and the unprecedented movement of people, challenging nations everywhere. And increasingly violent weather events around the world remind us of unfinished business in trying to mitigate climate change for the next generation.
All these events will conspire to make 2022 a fraught one. Yet humankind, uncannily, always seems able to rise to the occasion when threatened.
We have the ingenuity to anticipate the conflicts and work to mitigate them. Today is a good day to resolve to do that, starting at home, at block level, in our village and city councils, houses of worship and legislatures.
New days make for new beginnings. The year that ends today challenged us with disease and enmity. In contrast, 2022, which begins tomorrow, brings us hope – a lighthouse to keep us off the rocks. May it shine brightly throughout the coming year.
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Leaving the rancor behind: editorial - cleveland.com
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