Time - USA (2020-12-21)

A year marked by multiple crises, all at once, all over

the world: A once-in-a-century plague. Brutal racial

injustice. Glaring inequality. Apocalyptic wildfires.

Democracy under fire.

It was a particularly humbling year for the most

powerful nation on earth—a wake-up call for those

more accustomed to seeing America, despite its flaws,

as a beacon for the world. The U.S. has seen by far the

most confirmed cases of COVID-19 of any country,

and some of the worst fatality rates. The killings of

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony

McDade and many more brought about a reckoning

with systemic racism, long overdue and extraordi-

nary in scale. Economic inequality deepened. Almost

1 in 8 American adults reported that their household

didn’t have enough to eat at some point in November.

TIME’s Person of the Year over

the course of nearly a century

has been a measuring stick for

where the world is and where it’s

going. But how to make sense of

2020, a year without measure?

BY EDWARD FELSENTHAL

The Choice