Sunrise or Sunset?
01/01/24 05:23
January 1, 2024 (Vol. 18 No. 1) - Is this a photo of a sunrise or a sunset? Without context, you have no way of knowing. That's kind of the way I feel about the new year. There are lots of reasons to feel positive about the new year. Yet, there is cause for trepidation, as well. As I take time to look ahead to 2024, it may be useful to look back at this blog's 17 other New Year's Day attempts at prognostication. The track record has been good - for the most part. In 2008, I wrote that "the war in Iraq moves into its sixth calendar year with no end in sight." It wouldn't end until 2021. As we were still in the depths of the Great Recession at the start of 2009, I wrote "We are bordering on a national emergency and I have serious doubts that our elected representatives - Democrat and Republican - are up to the task." They weren't. On January 1, 2010, I expressed doubt that President Obama would be beaten in the 2012 presidential election. Correct again. However, I did not predict the strength of the Tea Party Movement - the forerunner to today's MAGA nonsense. Nor did I think in 2014 that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. However, I was spot-on at the start of 2016 when I wrote "The United States will elect a new president - and God help us if either of the frontrunners (Clinton and Donald Trump) actually win." When Trump "won" despite having 3.5 million fewer votes than Clinton, I wrote at the start of 2017 that "America today enters a new year with the highest level of anxiety that I can remember in my lifetime." That sentiment was certainly justified, as the next four years can be accurately characterized as (using CNN correspondent Dana Bash's famous description) "a shit show." This blog was dominated by expressions of disbelief and moral outrage during the four years of the Trump presidency. On this date in 2021, I said that the "real story" of previous year - the Year of COVID-19 - "was the callousness and incompetence of the Republican Party in the face of a disaster." My two New Year's Day posts during the Biden administration were more personally focused - a reflection that the return of an adult in the White House had brought a renewed sense of normalcy. But today, we enter another critical presidential election year. It appears that the greatest hope of saving American democracy rests on the shoulders of an octogenarian. The election of Donald Trump might be the last free election this country will ever have. On this date five years ago, I called 2019 "The Year of Living Dangerously." Unfortunately, that is even more true today than ever. We can only hope that the American people have the good common sense to embrace the light and reject the darkness when they go to the polls. That's it for now. Happy New Year and Fear the Turtle.