2024, meet 2025
Tonight we celebrate the age-old tradition of looking back while also looking forward, much like the Roman god Janus who had two faces and contemplated the past while pulling everything full steam ahead.
Time only goes in one direction, but as we look back on 2024, we’ll come to appreciate the things that we had and still do … until things start to really go sour in the US.
We’ll look back and think ‘wasn’t democracy great?’ or ‘remember those days when the disequilibrium between the rich and the poor, the religious and the atheists and the insiders and outsiders weren’t so obvious?’
2025 will be the confirmation of chaos in the United States.
Just four years ago, Donald Trump lead an insurrection against all that was holy for democracy in the United States and in just a few days, he will be at the helm again, with an unholy trinity of power behind him pulling the strings, including the world’s richest man Elon Musk, the world’s greatest dictator Vladimir Putin and religious fanatics who are keen on bringing the world to their command.
What’s even more disgusting is that we can’t go back and the vast majority of Canadians seem to think that Pierre Poilievre – the career politician who’s net worth is somehow in the ballpark of $25 million – will be any different.
Andrew Coyne (someone I rarely see eye-to-eye with) had a few bon mots about Trump as the wonderful last days of the free world draw to a close:
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please. There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.
The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.
At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric. At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.
Let’s face it: 2024 was not a good year.
It will live in history sandwiched somewhere between the German invasion of Poland and the Blitzkrieg in England. Trudeau wouldn’t step out of the way and now Canadians seem giddy with the idea of handing everything they’ve got to that nasty little man in opposition with the spine of a jellyfish and other Canadians seem all too happy to lie down and let Trump and his team rape Canada, adding yet another notch to the Trump record of criminal behaviours.
Even on a provincial level, it was more than disheartening with car-loving oafs ripping out bike lanes and handing over every last square inch of land in our province to developers. Doug Ford is busy privatizing our health care system just as the Boomer generation will need the most help. Be prepared for the massive sucking sound of your family’s wealth going to American-style (and American-owned) retirement facilities and health offices.
In the US, the system of ‘checks and balances’ is going to become the system of checks for friends, balances in the bank accounts of friends and shattering economic disaster for those on the outside. The Republicans control the House, the Senate, The SCOTUS and the Whitehouse. There is no longer the separation of church and state (there hasn’t been for a while, but it’ll be more obvious now) and the media has collapsed under pressure of lawsuits and sycophancy in exchange for a few bucks in advertising.
The Middle East is a f&cking mess, but there’s nothing really new there.
Around the world, people continue to elect governments that are so far right, it’s hard to imagine any progressive voice emerging any time soon.
Water: We All Need It, Trump Wants It
Will a new Canadian government cave to Trump’s absurd tariff tactics and instead exchange trillions of litres of water for Americans to use and abuse?
For Trump, to “Make America Great Again” is to bring jobs, agriculture and energy production as well as manufacturing back to the U.S. He can’t do that without water, and he has already signaled where he could find some. Canada has a “massive faucet” that would take only one day to turn on, and all of that water “would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.”
Folks, the tariff talk and 51st bullshit is just that. It’s a negotiating tactic.
Unfortunately, we have an army of weak-kneed politicians in Canada that don’t know how to read between the lines with blowhards like Trump, so we’re already caving to multiple demands.
I don’t have a solution, but I know PP isn’t ready for what’s coming our way.
So … There’s a Bright Side to 2025, Right?
Sorry to be a downer.
Of course there’s a bright side. There has to be.
In the US, I’m happy to see that folks like Robert Reich are doing everything he can to prepare us for the tyranny that’s at the doorsteps of the globe. Follow him, read his stuff and find ways to activate his ideas.
To be honest, he’s been pretty prolific lately. Maybe he’s getting himself ready to take a run at the Democrats. Who knows, but if you read ONE THING this year, check out The Big Picture: How we got into this mess, and how we get out of it.
The Guardian gave us this amazing article How To Survive the Broligarchy. It’s a twenty-point list of how to keep your sanity, privacy and power away from the insanity that’s about to take over Capitol Hill in the US, and probably Parliament Hill in Canada. While you’re there, give the Guardian some money. We NEED independent journalism to keep ideas free and clear of the plutocracy.
And if you want to just focus on yourself, do that!
Pick a bright side. Funnel all of your cash into reproductive rights. Lobby for better public transit.
Pick a battle and stick to it.
Lose a few pounds. Practice a musical instrument. Paint. Do what makes you happy.
Turn off the news.
The good news is that as things unravel, we’ll have the smug satisfaction that 100% of the carnage that’s coming our way will lie at the feet of the populists and demagogues.
Over the next few years, we will all have to find our own way to succeed despite what’s thrown at us.
Progressives everywhere will have to finally get smart about how they want change to happen and how to make it permanent.
It’ll sting for a while, but I’m optimistic that we’re going to stop finding ways to gripe amongst ourselves and finally know who the real bullies are.
Eventually, we’ll develop a plan to destroy the possibility of anyone ever being a billionaire again or make the polluters and destroyers of the world pay for their crimes against humanity and the planet.
Pause. Inhale. Exhale.
It’ll be OK.
I think.