Fuck you 2021
I know we’re all about gratitude, but can I just have a moment to really honour how horrible this year has been?
In order for us to celebrate resilience, we have to acknowledge that we’ve all had an extended stay in shit town. And right now it doesn’t look like we’ll be checking out in a hurry. So much sucks.
Covid sucks. It sucks because it kills people. It sucks because no government in the world has nailed it. It sucks because we had to use vaccines and that made people who don’t trust vaccines hate people who do. And vice versa. It made people think Craig Kelly – the MP who voted against same sex marriage, wants to drug test welfare recipients, votes against government action on animal extinction, loves live exports, says no to Aboriginal Land Rights, no to housing affordability, and denies climate change… well that tosser got elevated to ‘Freedom Fighter’. People who would hate EVERY other position he takes now think he’s a hero. So, fuck you Craig Kelly.
2021 made people I love send me weird YouTube videos about the worldwide plot to chip us. It made some people who vaccinate say the unvaccinated would die from covid. It made people who are anti-vax say the vaccinated would die from the vaccination. It made both groups say they don’t care about the other group because they are stupid and deserve to die. It made people I love think I’ve sold them out. It has dominated the conversation for too long. It is boring. It brings disappointment and division. It brings separation from loved ones. So a big ‘Fuck You’ to covid, from all of us – the vaxers AND the anti-vaxers.
Fuck you 2021 for all the horrible grief. The sweet children that died in the jumping castle, the precious little girls who died here from smoke inhalation, the young man they found dead on the beach at Lennox. For those of you who’ve lost a loved one, a parent or a child, or a partner, and then grieved alone, or were unable to attend a funeral because of covid restrictions. For the women who’ve died, one each week of 2021, from domestic violence. For the 20-year-old Wiradjuri man who spent two days screaming in distress before he scaled a wall and fell to his death, becoming the 459th death in custody. For all this pain, injustice and loss, I say ‘Fuck You 2021!’.
Fuck you 2021 and the prime minister we rode in on. He who believes more in the global heating of The Rapture than he does in climate change. Who allowed Barnaby Joyce the power to decide our emissions target. Who gave millions of dollars of our money to coal companies. Who publically humiliated us at Glasgow. Who would rather spend billions on nuclear submarines than on public housing, but calls himself a Christian. For being a coward. For making the covid response a State of Origin match where public health became an electioneering football. Who let alleged rapists and sex offenders sit in government. Who needed his wife to tell him how to feel. Who doubled the cost of arts degrees, and then sent his staff off to empathy training (ironically something you get with an arts degree). Fuck you Scott Morrison and your shitty leadership. Fuck you for your smug grin and your atrophied heart. Fuck you for not being Jacinda Ardern, or a leader we could love and trust. And one who doesn’t need God or Jenny to know what empathy is.
Fuck you 2021 and the dickheads who continue to chop down our forests. The remaining forests in areas ravaged by fire in 2019-20, that are habitat and sanctuary to the animals who survived the fires. Fuck you for selling unmillable timber at 25 cents a tree. Fuck you for arresting forest protectors and treating them like criminals. Fuck it that not enough people can care because they’re broken by a litany of soul-destroying shit that just keeps coming at us. Fuck that.
Fuck you Rupert Murdoch, and fuck you Lachlan. Fuck you for perverting politics and for prosecuting your own ideological and economic interests; for corrupting the public dialogue; for making us racist; for making us stupid; for making us lose reverence for real knowledge; for making us believe a neo-liberal economy was the only way forward; for leading a witch hunt on the ABC. And for making us hate. Fuck you.
Fuck you 2021 on behalf of the kids who had to study from home. For those who left school and instead of travelling got locked down. Fuck you 2021 on behalf of the parents who had to work AND school their kids. Fuck you 2021 on behalf of the teachers who deserve, but don’t get, a pay rise; for the frontline health workers who have been on double shifts for two years after a pay rise for nurses was knocked back in 2019 – ironically the Year of Nurses.
Fuck you 2021 for killing our live music scene. For making artists truly suffer. For sending people to the wall. Fuck you 2021 for the out-of-control housing market that saw so many become homeless. Fuck you for fuelling this shit-storm of ‘wealth’.
Fuck you 2021. And I’ve got one more thing to say – you’re over.
Let’s bury that fucker. And with it, the privilege, the neo-liberal ideology, the pain.
Let’s take 2022 by the reins, and not fuck it up.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
