The year in re-phew! Part 2

Countin' down (and out) 2025, again

[Part 1 here.]

7. Democrats: Wussys vs. Winners. The Democratic Party is run by trimmers and rollers-over who think the road to success is to take no bold stands nor starkly differentiate themselves from their opposition even when that opposition is straight fascist. Its regnant philosophy is the “Abundance” shtick peddled by Ezra “Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way” Klein, a watery sort of YIMBYism writ large, which its progenitors hope will lure voters with promises to cut red tape and make government work better — right after voters expressed their disgust with just this kind of hard-to-grasp small-ball by reelecting the strongman Trump over Kamala Harris, whom the centrists hobbled by insisting she stop calling Republicans “weird” and, when she lost, blamed it on her failure to beat up on trans people.

In 2025 they kept listening to lame centrist consultants and columnists, and their head simps in Congress, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, kept trying to strangle their young and more aggressively progressive stars, shoving them aside for elderly, death-prone lifers. In that spirit they kept the Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani at arm’s length, even as he beat the ass of sclerotic former governor Andrew Cuomo for the party’s New York City mayoral nomination, cruised to victory in November, and inspired young voters — whom the party desperately needs — coast to coast.

As of late 2025, young firebrands were still banging on the door. But it may be that age is not the relevant factor here. Consider: The two top candidates in the Maine Dem Senate nomination race are youngish Graham Platner — inarguably a firebrand, albeit a tainted one — and Governor Janet Mills, 77 years of age but one of the few Democratic officials to resoundingly tell Trump to fuck off and win. Maybe the way for Democrats to win is not to be young and vigorous, necessarily, but to fight as if they are.

6. AI vs. humanity. Generative AI is very good at cataloguing and sifting information, but it cannot think or create, at least not in the way these words have been used since the dawn of civilization.

It can plagiarize and hallucinate, though, and respond to humans based on data dumps — excuse me, LLMs — in a manner that is perhaps convincing if the user is desperate to believe it is real, like customers of the creepy AI grandmas who never age (and dead kids who do) that some hucksters are selling.

In the same manner, billionaires are pushing AI hard, not because they think it will help humanity, but because they think it will help them by automating existence itself, making humans extraneous, disposable slaves. They try to lure the proles unto their own enslavement with outrageous claims like “Everything That Costs $100 Will Sell For A Penny” with AI, but polls show non-billionaires smell a rat. The question for 2026 and beyond is whether the hyper-rich will be able to force it on the rest of us, and how violent the pushback will be if they do.

5. Mild in the Streets. Normally when something seems to go right for the left, you’ll see (in addition to the dismissive attempted misdirections of the right) a lot of dissension among the beneficiaries as to whether this is really the right path or a disastrous detour (see #7 above). But the No Kings phenomenon of nationwide rallies in opposition to Trump and his policies has seen very little of that.

Why? First, because they have been successful on their own terms, with turnout in April, June, September, and October large enough to force the Prestige Press to notice it, thus heartening the faithful and reminding everyone else that Trump, contrary to his assertions, is not universally beloved but actually has a substantial opposition.

Also, not only the size but also the nature of the events showed this was not a Tea Party astroturf campaign — huge crowds, even millions of people, came out in red and blue jurisdictions to show their opposition to Trumpism, and kept on coming, and nearly all of them were well-behaved normies. As I said in October, “it gave less of a protest vibe than the vibe of a gathering — a place you go because family and friends are there, and you want to see them and let them know you’re with them.” It also gave a feeling that citizens would continue to show up as a matter of course, because they liked seeing their own power reflected in the power of their community.

4. Bari-atric surgery. Bari Weiss has been the clown princess of bad-faith Freeze Peach media for years, repackaging rightwing talking points as bold contrarianism in her web magazine The Free Press and at her unaccredited college UATX — which has recently begun to disintegrate as the big names attached to it realize that the “forbidden courses” shtick isn’t likely to work so well when the real threat to higher education is Trump’s shakedowns, which the FP plays off as a BothSides situation (“Harvard Had It Coming. That Doesn’t Mean Trump Is Right”).

But then the rightwing and hyper-rich Ellison Family bought The Free Press for an insane amount of money. I thought at first that, since they also owned CBS, they would give Weiss the late-night talk show slot; but instead they gave her a job for which she was even less qualified — head of CBS News.

In this role Weiss has alienated staff, chased off stalwarts, fired eight on-air correspondents (hmmm, all women! Imagine that) and generally wrought havoc — which pretty much follows the Trump playbook: Take over a national institution, then set about wrecking it.

Weiss closed the year with a bang, pulling hours before airtime a 60 Minutes story about the CECOT extraordinary rendition prisons to which Trump sends detained immigrants to be tortured. Weiss said the story couldn’t run without an administration response, which the administration had refused to give, basically setting a standard by which Trump can veto any story he doesn’t like. It’s absurd but, like Weiss’ lack of credentials, that doesn’t matter — she was hired to destroy CBS News, longtime bête noire of rightwingers — and for that job, at least, she is eminently qualified.

[Big finish tomorrow!]