Plus: Libertarianism in the 2020s, Trump’s flavored vape ban, and more…
by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Reason.com
2020 brings bail reform, bag bans, more marijuana, fewer tampon taxes, narwhal protection, higher minimum wages, and many other new laws. The 2019 holiday season has come to a close, and now here we all are looking into the start of a new year and a new decade. Will the 2020s really be as bad as everyone keeps predicting? Probably not, if you consider all the doom-and-gloom eulogizing that’s been done over the 2010s, which actually turned out to be a pretty damn great decade, comparatively speaking.
Sure, if you listen to mainstream Republicans or Democrats, we’re on a collision course with an imminent immigrant takeover, full socialism, mandatory drag queen story hours in public schools, unavoidable climate catastrophe, the Third Reich redux, or any number of other horrors. But these people thrive on creating a climate of partisan panic; it helps them consolidate their power. Conveniently, whatever bad things we face they are probably their opponents’ fault.