As 2020 finally comes to an end, many publications are releasing their annual “best and worst” lists, but in a year marred by such tragedy, is anything worth celebrating? Many are simply summing up 2020 with terms like “please end” or “go away,” or letters such as “WTF,” “SMH” or “JFC.” Here in Ohio, there were at leasta few silver linings in a very dark year, but since the good doesn’t always outweigh the bad, we’ll just remember 2020 as “one of those years” and hope for better days in the Buckeye State ahead.

THE WORST

- COVID-19 - This is a no-brainer, as the coronavirus pandemic killed thousands of Ohioans, destroyed the economy and completely disrupted our way of life. Ohio wasn’t the same without the sporting events, concerts, music festivals, county fairs, restaurants and other amazing activities (usually filled with thousands of people!) that make Ohio unique. And while our state was hailed for “getting it right” back in March, we slowly slipped into the same downward spiral that several other states did because thousands of Ohioans didn’t take the virus seriously, killing thousands of others. I mean, WTF.

Sometimes a couple of nominations convey an incoming president’s basic mindset and worldview. That’s how it seems with Joe Biden’s choices to run the Office of Management and Budget and the State Department.

For OMB director, Biden selected corporate centrist Neera Tanden, whose Center for American Progress thrives on the largesse of wealthy donors representing powerful corporate interests. Tanden has been a notably scornful foe of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing; former Sanders speechwriter David Sirota calls her “the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States.” Who better to oversee the budget of the U.S. government?

When I was a student revolutionary, I attended a debate between a communist and liberal in Manhattan circa 1972. When the latter complained that workers didn’t strike in the socialist states one of the reds in the audience shouted out that this was because “The workers own them!”

In Dear Comrades! seasoned Soviet/Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky poses the question: What does happen when the workers go out on strike in a (purportedly) workers’ state? Russia’s official entry for 2020’s Best International Feature Film Academy Award is based on an actual labor action in June 1962 by the industrial proletariat at the city of Novocherkassk, back in the USSR.