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Because face it: humans can often be terrible, making rash, selfish decisions at best and murdering one another at worst. Through most of 2020, to be locked inside and looking out was to feel peculiarly powerless. And even as we grew to feel more remote from the world as individuals, it also seemed that individual nations had begun to curl in on themselves, motivated by misguided notions of their own power and self-sufficiency. What does an "America first" agenda mean in a country that fails its own citizens when it comes to protecting them from a deadly virus? In the worst months of 2020, we were a nation that could barely take care of itself, let alone help anyone else through a crisis. Worse yet, we were on our way to becoming a nation that didn't want to help anyone else, even when it was in our own interest to do so. And democracy—not a badge you can earn, Scout-style, but a practice and a discipline that needs careful tending—came to seem wobbly and fragile even in places that have long professed to believe in it. As if it were a previously fashionable fad we'd all become tired of.
因为，面对现实吧：人类往往很可怕，最好的情况下他们会做出草率、自私的决定，最坏的情况下他们会互相残杀。我们在2020年的大部分时间里都被关在屋里，看着外面，感觉特别无力。作为个人，感觉自己离世界越来越远，似乎就连单个国家也开始蜷缩在自己的圈子里，被自己的力量和自给自足的错误观念所驱使。对于一个在保护本国公民免受致命病毒侵害方面无能为力的国家来说，“美国优先”议程意味着什么？在2020年最糟糕的几个月里，我们的国家连自己都顾不了，更不用说帮助别人度过危机了。更糟糕的是，我们正在成为一个不想帮助别人的国家，即使这样做符合我们的自身利益。民主——不是童子军式的徽章，而是一种需要小心呵护的实践和纪律——民主在那些即便长期宣称相信民主的地方也变得摇摇欲坠、不堪一击，就好像民主是一种我们都已经厌倦了的过时了的时尚。
The pages on this strange calendar just kept turning, with the menace of the pandemic bleeding through all of it. Public figures who meant a great deal to us— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Boseman—were wrested away. And in May, the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis ignited righteous anger not just across the country but around the world. The ruthlessness of that act revived attention to similar outrages earlier in the year, particularly the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. It also reminded us how often, throughout history, Black people had suffered similar injustices, with no recourse, no means of changing the status quo. And then in August, even with the whole world watching, police in Kenosha, Wis., shot and partially paralyzed another Black man, Jacob Blake, as three of his children watched from the backseat of his car.
这台奇怪的日历一页一页地翻着，到处都是病毒的威胁。那些对我们很重要的公众人物——露丝·巴德·金斯伯格、约翰·刘易斯、科比·布莱恩特、查德威克·博斯曼——都在这一年去世了。今年5月，乔治·弗洛伊德在明尼阿波利斯市被警察枪杀，引发了全国乃至全世界正义的愤怒。这一残忍行径再次引起人们对今年早些时候类似暴行的关注，尤其是对布伦娜·泰勒和艾哈迈德·阿伯里的杀害。它还提醒我们，黑人在历史上一直遭受类似的不公待遇而无力改变现状。再之后是8月，即便全世界都在关注，威斯康星州基诺沙的警察还是朝另一名黑人男子开了枪并致其瘫痪，而他的三个孩子坐在车后座目睹了这一切。
The toxic traditions of injustice and inequality in America are no secret. A sequence of tragic events finally caused more white people to wake up. Whether this heightened awareness of the racism that has plagued our country since its founding translates into actual change remains to be seen. That's just one of many question marks waiting for us in 2021 and beyond. After a year of so many changes, will we change radically too?
不平等和不公正是美国的一种有毒的传统，这已经不是什么秘密了。一系列的悲剧事件最终令更多的白人醒悟过来。这种对自建国以来一直困扰我国种族主义的高度认识能否转化为实际的变化还有待观察。这只是2021年及以后等待我们的众多问题中的一个。一年多经历了如此多的变化，我们也会彻底改变吗？
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
