I am hereby declaring the Year 2021 to be over. It has been a terrible year surpassing 2020 which was a bloody hard act to follow.

I am also declaring that the Year 2022 has begun. Today is January -6, 2022, rather than 26 December 2021. It is still Sunday.

Good riddance, you miserable, worthless, destructive year. I want to be the first person to write your obituary and to throw dirt on your casket.

Come on, Big Red Car, January MINUS 6, 2022?

Yes, dear reader, I am no longer acknowledging that 2021 even exists. I intend to piss on its grave, recognizing it will be a long line, but I am going first.

I do not intend to catalog all the bad things that make 2021 such a merciless bitch. Take a second and think — end your list at ten, no more.

Survival

If you are reading this, then you have survived. A good many of our countrymen have not and I take a minute to recognize the tragedy of that reality, but if you are on the other end of this year, like and with me, then you have survived.

In that survival, you have had to call upon depths of strength that many have not tapped, that many did not know existed.

I recall my mother telling me about World War II rationing — automobiles, tires, gasoline, fuel oil, coal, firewood, nylon, silk, and shoes. Americans used their ration cards and stamps to received a diminished share of household staples including meat, dairy, coffee, sugar, dried fruits, jams, jellies, lard, shortening, and oils.

Families planted Victory Gardens to provide vegetables. As a nation, we fought back.

It was a hard time as everything had to go to the war effort and did for four years.

But, Americans, a tough breed of people — us, our people, our national DNA — adapted, survived, and emerged victorious.

Strength

We are all far, far, far stronger than we ever knew. It requires adversity and trying times to find and sharpen that toughness.

In the Years of 2020/21, America found that toughness, that strength. Each of us individually, found our core and it was equal to the task at hand. We adapted, we defied our fate, we overcame, and we pressed on.

The most important result is that we all now have a recognizable reservoir of strength to call upon in the future.

We are not the “summer soldier” or the “sunshine patriot” of Thomas Payne’s The Crisis; we are the faithful warriors who when the fighting becomes bloody stand tall on the barricades and defy hardship striving mightily on to eventual victory.

Take a second to revel in that strength knowing we are all far stronger than we knew in a million small and big ways.

In 2022, join me on the barricades as we stand in defiance against whatever the New Year throws at us, you warriors, you Americans, you glorious survivors. Thumb your nose at the world.

Happy New Year. God bless us all.