"... COVID lockdowns; massive government spending and inflation and constrictive energy policies driving up energy and food prices, as well as most “downstream prices,” and wiping out retirement savings; Fed strategies depressing the market; war in Ukraine threatening nuclear confrontation; China’s rising political aggression; political corruption of government institutions and apparent government-led attacks on the First Amendment, ... rising urban crime; a surge in illegal immigration bringing drugs, crime and a disrupted labor market; a growing culture war on women, fueled both by the Dobbs decision and the rising political activism of the trans community; and chaos in the American educational system, leading to a sharp decline in student performance ....

"There is no sign that the forces fueling these problems will abate or be reversed. If anything, they may become more intense." Grady Means, Opinion Contributor - 12/30/22 8:00 AM, The Hill

So then, what should we make of this new year, already unfolding precociously before us? Is it heralding the end? The beginning of the end? The end of the end? The end of the beginning? Probably just another year, just like the other years. Something we'll complain about but ultimately live through. Let's hope so. Maybe that's the best hope anyone could hope for. As Roseanne Roseannadana so wisely observed, before she died of cancer, "It's always something."

Actually, in many years some one thing does rise above the pack. Imagine a bunch of wild dogs menacing an ill-tempered bear, but the bear is bent on a path of destruction all his own. It's the bear that poses the bigger threat. Pestilence, starvation, the first-hand terror of war, a dangerously hostile ecosystem. Nazism, nuclear destruction, hordes of invading barbarians, waves of desperate refugees, if you're Athens, then Sparta, if you're Putin, then a pip squeak nation to the east or a guy lost and forgotten in a prison somewhere north of the Arctic Circle who simply won't die for you despite several well-planned attempts.

An overarching threat was surely the case in 2020 with COVID. The Chicago Fire (1871). The September 11 Attacks (2011). Pearl Harbor (1941). The 1955 World Series. All years marked by a crisis that takes all other crises under its wings. And other years, like last year, don't feel like one of those. Sure, there was inflation, a hilariously incompetent House of Representatives, the southern border, runaway spending by a runaway Senate, but none of those really consumed everything else. Oh, and a couple of wars. But that's just the point. The problem with 2023 was more with the dogs than the bear.

And 2024? Well, according to the newsweekly magazine The Economist, there is an existential threat rising above the pack in the current year. They report: "In 'The World Ahead 2024,' our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year ... no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024."

The great threat that is Trump, according to the Economist editors is that in winning back power following his election-denial campaign from 2020, he will feel affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and the self-sacrifice that make a nation great and he will proceed to wage war on every institution that stands in the way of his own self-elevation, including his own Department of Justice and the nation's very courts themselves. They fear he would feel unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant ventures.

Worse, his critics fear a Trump victory in November would create a profound validating effect on our critics abroad, who would rejoice over evidence that American democracy is as dysfunctional as they like to claim.

Frankly, this may be giving the man more credit than he deserves. However dastardly his intentions and his indulgences might become, he remains a man more devoted to gestures than actual accomplishments. Little that he proposes to do gets transformed into actual reality, whether it's a wall around Mexico or a palace coup. In practice, Trump's competence level in the realm of actual achievement would seem to be on a par with, say, the White House plumbers of the Nixon era, who succeeded only in taking down the president they sought to preserve. Even cases of unqualified success, the repeal of Roe v Wade for instance, seem to lead to unforeseen and unthought-out complications and consequences that take us somewhere different from his simple intentions. Mid-terms anyone?

2023 Annual Skelly Family Christmas Video

Donald Trump in 2024, even if elected, may well just turn into one of many wild dogs nipping at posterity's heels. Dangerous. Menacing. But a pittance measured against the great scheme of things.

Consider the fresh debacle of the Middle East. Ah, historic Palestine, where men, of even the best intentions and more often not, have never done anything but harm since the first thoughts sprouted of creating a Jewish state in an area overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim. Sins committed in pursuit of one of civilization's more noble quests, a homeland for an historically mistreated people, now seem as countless as the stars and, like those stars, ever expanding.

Palestine was among the earliest regions in the world to see human habitation, and look how far we've come. No one can get this right, and every effort seems only to make matters worse. Probably more crimes against humanity per capita are committed in Palestine each year than any place in the universe, and it is our "Holy Land," the setting for most of the Bible, the historical locale of Jesus' ministry, the location of the first Qibla (the modified compass used by Muslims to indicate the direction to face when performing prayers) and the site of the Isra and Mi'raj event (the miraculous journey the Prophet made, all in one night, from Makkah to Masjid Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem before ascending to heaven). How are we doing, Lord?

But Gaza and Israel are the problem for the ages, not just for the year 2024. We take ourselves so seriously. As horrid as the current outrages may be, they represent just the most recent eruption, where once again it seems that all sides of the issue are completely wrong. Inflation is the same sort of problem if on a different scale, something the whole world has been grappling with coming out of COVID. Same for climate change. Gun violence. And, yes, immigration at the southern border. The only reason we have to deal with these things this year is that we should have been dealing with them all along.

So all in all, 2024 is likely just another year in the trenches, with lots of unpleasantness to either deal with or endure. Or both. And then put off solving for another day. As Father Guido Sarducci once observed, "Vita est labor." Life is a job. It will be there tomorrow.

As to Trump, at some basic level it's hard to believe the American electorate, as dull-witted as they may seem, would really fall so hopelessly, yet again, for the shameless flirtations of (let's face it) a roguish imposter when their voting finger is finally wrapped around the voting trigger. Surely at this late juncture even the most love-struck lonely hearts in our midst can begin to recognize when they're being taken for a ride.

No? Well, then if not, maybe there really is one single, overriding, overarching crisis demanding our close, serious and immediate attention in 2024. We may really need to devote, at last, some attention to drastically improving our system of education. Grady Means was right: What we've got now really isn't doing the job.

Happy New Year, everybody. Let's make it a good one.