March 23, 2026 Six Years…

Six years ago, I began my online musings. 

I would never have thought in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that things would have gotten substantially worse in the world. That divisions and war would be the new normal the world finds itself in in 2026. 

Back in March 2020, the world felt surreal; things had gone sideways. We were forced to stay home, to do things like social distance from one another. We had to wear masks in public, and they told everyone to stay home. At first, we were united in battling the viral infection circling the globe. 

That unity soon developed cracks. 

People pushed back against the controls being implemented by the governments of the world. Health organizations were trying to cope with a constantly changing infection. The infection became a psychological one as much as a physical one. 

But we did our best to combat the fear and deal with the increasing divisions in the world. Cracks became crevices. The world felt at odds with itself. Truckers protested and took on the establishment; they took over the streets of Ottawa. Every day, we became more divided.

No one could predict how large the divide would become. 

By the end of 2020, and into late 2021, I thought things could not get any stranger. An insurrection in the US Capitol building by a group of thugs looking to overturn the 2020 election seemed the ultimate in bizarre. 

It was a harbinger of things to come.

At that time, we all thought that was the end for Donald Trump. There was no way he could come back from promoting an insurrection of the American government.

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I thought the world was past the days of wars and destruction. Yet there we were – faced with a war on Europe’s doorstep. 

COVID ended, but the divisions first sewn in the shadow of a viral infection became massive. Divisions that were enabled and encouraged by social media and the digital universe.

We hoped for a better world, a new normal where we would be united in a singular cause. A cause that would bring the world into the 21st century. One where we looked after each other. Where people could be anything they wanted. A world filled with hope. That world started to vanish in 2016; by 2020, it had all but disappeared.

We now live in the 21st century, which has war as the backdrop, war instead of peace. Hate instead of love. Israel was attacked on October 6, 2023. People died, and hostages disappeared from their families’ lives. 

Israel struck back. Two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy that unfolded in the Gaza Strip was a horror show of revenge. A horror show that would continue for two and a half years.

Then came the previously unthinkable. The resurrection of Donald Trump. I was stunned when 77 million Americans actually chose to support a man who was convicted of felonies, who blatantly disregarded the results of an election. He is someone who wants to undermine everything the United States has stood for in the last sixty years. And yet millions of people supported him to lead the so-called free world. 

And his reelection has been worse than anyone could have imagined.

I feel like I’m watching a B-rate thriller movie. A movie where we think this is too phony for even a bad movie. Every day, it’s a new affront to every norm we’ve held true for the last one hundred years. He verbally attacked Canada, threatening to make us a part of his nightmare of a country. He’s verbally abused almost every leader in the world. Except for Vladimir Putin, somehow, the Russian leader is immune to Trump’s attacks.

He started early in his new reign of error. Tariffs to make the rest of the world pay for an imagined unfair way the US has been treated.

The guy dressed down the wartime leader of Ukraine for not wearing a suit to their meeting, then turned around and wore a stupid baseball cap to every event he attends. He even wore a ball cap for a memorial to a fallen soldier. Trump oozes class like an outhouse at hip hop festival.

Who actually says they think it’s a good thing someone died? That’s exactly what Trump did when Robert Mueller, the former FBI director, passed away this spring. 

And the list goes on.

Then there was Greenland. He wants to own Greenland and even threatened the NATO alliance over ownership of the island nation.  

Now we are mired in a war that doesn’t seem to have an end. Trump, without warning or apparent provocation, bombed Iran back into the last century. Except Iran has fought back and now it is another horror movie we are experiencing.

Yet it’s the reality we are living in.

I try to take every day one step at a time. One. Day. At a time. I keep hoping that we can come out of this in one peace.

So, in order to find peace, I put on my skis. I go to the mountains and slide down on the snow. Even though the snow hasn’t been great this year. I enjoy every turn and every breath. It’s all any of us can do. 

This too shall pass.

I hope the planet can survive Donald Trump act 2. One day we will wake up and much like the COVID pandemic it will be over. I just hope that future generations manage to learn from our mistakes and make the world a better place.