The prophets of doom are all around us. At one of the most heinous New Year’s gatherings imaginable (no, really), amid the poetry readings (seriously), memoirs of dead parents (actually), renditions of Imagine by John Lennon (I kid you not), was also a haiku — or some sort of pseudo-poetic rant — about the end of democracy in America (sigh). By an Australian (eye roll). Luckily, it was just before midnight, because you could not top that cr*p in 2023. But now it’s 2024!
Let’s start with a reminder for those of us lucky enough to live in America (and Australia, and England, France and every other democracy): Our lives are great. By global standards, we are rich. We are free. We can change our governments. We can worship — or not worship — our God. We can listen to John Lennon; or, preferably, not. Women are not forced into hijabs or burkas. We can quit our jobs, or not. We can change schools. We can criticize our leaders. We can gather with like-minded people without fear of arrest. There’s a lot more — but suffice it to say, our lives are better, our values are stronger, our freedoms more robust, our choices wider, our prosperity more secure, than those who live in tyranny, whether that tyranny is Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or any other. As you look forward with a sigh to the next 12 months, remember that.
Still, there is much to sigh about.
There are more than 100 remaining Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. Please do not forget them. Bring them home.
Iran is accelerating its nuclear weapons program and terrorizing its own people and the Middle East with precious little push back from Washington.
China is only tightening its noose around its “near abroad,” but our leaders are pretending that Xi Jinping has had a change of character.
Ukraine remains under siege by Russia, and sub-rosa efforts by the Biden administration and others to broker “peace talks” between Moscow and Kyiv are continuing. (AEI’s own Fred Kagan sums this up beautifully in an internal email: Putin wants peace talks; not peace.)
More than 100 Christians were slaughtered by jihadists in Nigeria, and the world yawned.
And yes, America has an election in November, likely between two candidates that more than 70 percent of Americans wish were not on the ballot. (This bizarre stat confuses us all; where are those 70 percent in the primaries?)
We will talk about all of this and more in the coming year on the What the Hell pod. Send us your ideas, your comments, your suggestions. More importantly, however, remember that in that litany above, including all the things that weren’t mentioned, we are not powerless. Stand up and be counted. Do not allow your newspapers, your representatives, your preachers, your family members, or that stranger scratching at a poster, that dean of your school, that neighbor, that stranger, to get away with thinking that your values do not matter. If 2023 taught us anything, it is that silence is complicity. Be respectful, be decent, be kind. But do not tolerate the intolerable.
Thank you so much for being part of our community. we’re grateful for every single one of you. Happy New Year.
Dani, thank you so much for your insight and for posting this. And I may even share this with friends, both liberal and conservative. You speak truth, and hard for either "side of the aisle" to argue with, even if they disagree. - Chris