There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. I’m not a big Lenin guy, but I remember this line from my course reading in school. I’d say it pretty accurately captures the year we just went through.
The political chaos that unfurled had some distinctly 1960s notes to it, with assassination attempts, presidential nominee swaps, and mass protests over bloody foreign wars supplied with our country’s weapons. After the party’s evisceration at the ballot box in November, Democrats now find themselves in disarray yet again as they try to chart a course forward. Leadership is still clinging onto power, though their grip is slipping under the weight of catastrophic missteps.
The unwinding of the country apparently doesn’t look so bad from the vantage point of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, whose oligarchs are lining up to kiss the ring of the incoming Trump administration far more subserviently than they did the last time around. A mergers and acquisitions boom is already under way, the stock market is up, and the C-suite class can hardly contain their giddiness at the prospect of looting the country without strictures when appearing on business news shows like . As we close the chapter on 2024, there are still many developing storylines that will carry into next year.
Here are some of my favorite pieces from the past year: I’ll start on a somewhat more optimistic note. One of the trends I observed this campaign season is a shift amon.
