The Year We Made It Through

2025 Finally Ends

Past Retrospectives:

• 2024: The Year Things Fell Apart

• 2023: The Year We Held Our Breath

• 2022: The Best Worst Year

There’s a tradition around these parts where, on the last day of the year, I do a political and personal retrospective. I talk about some work of art or literature that I feel encapsulates the general vibes of the season and the moment, and hope for better things in the coming year.

My last newsletter checked most of those boxes. And speaking of which: thank you all, so much, for all the support in the wake of that article. From new subscriptions to messages of encouragement to phone calls and check-ins, people have been so kind and so wonderful. If I did not respond to you personally, please know that I saw it and that I’m grateful, and that it means a lot.

All that’s really left to talk about, then, is this year in politics. And what a year it’s been.

On the surface, 2025 was one of the darkest years in American history. There was that brief period at the beginning of the year where a lot of articles talked about “heading for a Constitutional crisis,” and then those articles stopped, because no one wanted to admit that the crisis was over and the Constitution lost. Masked, armed thugs now abduct and imprison people in unspeakable conditions, then deport them without due process to the nations they fled or random war-torn countries or, in the case of roughly 280 Venezuelans, to a concentration camp in El Salvador. The administration openly targets those who oppose the President for deportation while handing out pardons to allies like candy at Halloween. Many institutions meant to protect us have either capitulated or crumbled. Larry Ellison, one of the most evil billionaires in the world, now controls TikTok: the window through which most young people view the world. NSPM-7 has criminalized dissent, and the administration is laying groundwork to use that directive on a broad scale against “anti-American” elements. Our military now regularly bombs fishing boats and murders survivors, which is against international law and also basic morality, and now they’re targeting facilities within Venezuelan borders. And more—so much more, overwhelmingly more, which is part of the horror: we’ve gotten used to so many unthinkable things that it’s impossible to keep track of all of them.

To make things worse, Donald Trump is in clear physical and mental decline, which a lot of people see as good news and which scares the hell out of me. Trump is a capricious narcissist. JD Vance is a focused sociopath. Is he electable? Doubtful. And yet, if Trump passes before 2028, it doesn’t matter; Vance will assume full control of the military and ICE regardless. He enjoys the backing of our Silicon Valley tech overlords and the blood-and-soil far right which, were this a strategy game, would be my two personal top-seed picks (though they are natural enemies with an unstable alliance at best). A Vance presidency would be far more dangerous than three more years of Trump, and there’s a very real chance that’s the future we’re headed for.

And yet, despite all of these horrors and portents and signs, I’m a lot less afraid than I was a year ago. More solid, more certain. I expect 2026 to be hideous. I expect it to make 2025 look like a walk in the park. And yet…

There are so many things we did not know as 2024 drew to a close. We knew things were going to get bad, but we did not know how bad or in what specific ways. We especially did not know how the American people would react to an authoritarian presidency. Would people quietly acquiesce, or would they stand up and fight?

The answer, we now know, is the second thing. Our institutions either capitulated or were broken on the wheel of DOGE, but the American people stood strong this year—not all of them, but enough. We saw some of the largest protests in our history this year and, more importantly, we saw communities come together in LA and DC and Chicago and cities across this nation to say: Absolutely Not. Regular, everyday people on the street have dropped what they’re doing to warn their neighbors of ICE’s presence, prevent them from entering buildings, and on a few occasions dearrest strangers. We’ve seen ICE watch groups form around the country who use whistles to thwart raids and educate their fellow citizens on their rights.

This administration may use more lethal force in the new year, it’s not guaranteed but it’s possible. But this is America goddamnit, and it’s hard to overestimate how much we dislike being told what to do. Our Revolution was more complicated than “we’d rather take on the most powerful army in the world than pay slightly higher taxes imposed without our consent”…but not by much.

We are simply not suited for authoritarianism as a people. We are a nation descended from those willing to leave everything behind and start fresh rather than put up with bullshit, or people brought here in shackles who shattered them and triumphed, or people who were here from the beginning and survived centuries of brutality to be here today, or some race-defying amalgam of the three. We are many. We are one. We are defiant to our bones.

And we survived this year. I say this not to downplay the harm already done, the people detained or disappeared or thrown into a Salvadoran torture prison to be beaten and raped, or the people who lost their lives at the hands of ICE, but because a lot of us didn’t know whether or how we could could function under an authoritarian government. Now, we do. America is coming undone and we are here. Our rights are crumbling and we are here. And if we could make it through 2025 with our spirits more or less intact, defiant in the face of armed goons and developments purposefully designed to drive us to despair, we can make it through 2026 as well.

At the dawn of 2025, MAGA seemed ascendent. As the year draws to a close, they are shaken to their core. Trump is sunsetting and the girls are fighting: Ben Shapiro vs Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene vs Trump, Candace Owens vs TPUSA, Nick Fuentes vs Candace Owens. And as the worst people in the world fight over the post-Trump future, their voters are starting to wise up. Not all of them. Not the true believers. But the people at the margins, the ones who voted for lower egg prices and didn’t believe that Trump would actually do all the things he said he’d do, are waking up.

I am still very worried about the integrity of the 2026 elections, but not like I was last year. Nearly every time a Republican appeared on the ballot this year they lost historically, even in red states, and they are headed for a vicious primary season that should nail that coffin shut. The Trump administration will have to do more than put their thumb on the scales to save themselves from a truly historic shellacking come November.

And the people holding the reins of power? The anti-American, blood-and-soil traitors currently striving to destroy everything good about this place we call home? My God are they stupid. ICE is objectively terrible at their job. Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pete Hegseth, the rest of these clowns—dangerous, yes, but dumb as rocks. And cowards! Stephen and Katie Miller are moving onto a military base because they’re afraid of chalk drawings—that should tell you everything you need to know about the resilience and courage of the people trying to crush us.

I have never loved this country more than I do right now, never been more proud of my fellow Americans. Violence is coming, I think—bad violence, unprecedented oppression—but I believe we have what it takes to stand against it. We will make it out of fascism stronger than before, and we will remake our country in its own image: closer to what we were always meant to be. It will not happen next year, or the year after that. But it will happen in my lifetime.

Happy New Year. I’m off to take a shower and clean my room and figure out an outfit that will work for both a 1920s-themed party and a warehouse rave. Let’s love life in ‘26. Let’s live defiantly. Work hard, play hard, and never let the bastards win.