Thanks to the Gregorian calendar, that merciless, papal-certified system of measure, the year 2024 was a full twenty-four hours longer than usual, granting our wayward species an extra day—February 29—to fill with what we do best: immiserating, vilifying, or else annihilating our fellow man. In Gaza that day, as the United Nations and other groups continued to warn of imminent if not active famine, the Israeli army opened fire on a crowd gathered near a convoy of aid trucks, killing more than one hundred people and injuring seven hundred others. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, then still campaigning with characteristic entitlement for a second term, and Donald Trump arrived separately at the Texas-Mexico border to boast about how happy they would be to trample international asylum law, juice up border patrol, and accelerate deportations to varying degrees, if only voters would give them the chance. We all know how that turned out.
Biden finally staggered out of the presidential race after sundowning in prime time, but somehow Trump—convicted of thirty-four felony counts, grazed by an assassin’s bullet—was well-positioned to return to the White House. Though heir-apparent vice president Kamala Harris’s ability to occasionally speak in technically complete, if circuitous, sentences ignited a cautious flame of hope, that fire was well on its way to being extinguished by the time Oprah Winfrey took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in August to claim, quoting the late Representative John Lewis, that “we’re all in the same boat now.” It’s unclear what she meant by this: Winfrey, a billionaire thrice over, has been spotted on David Geffen’s $300 million superyacht; the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and few own boats, literal or metaphorical. Perhaps she was alluding to the ailing democracy in which we are occasionally cajoled via automated text message to participate at the polls. Trump promised to relieve citizens of even that obligation, which compelled liberal commentators to warn in increasingly apocalyptic tones that democracy itself was, once more, at risk. Even The New Yorker started throwing around the f-word. Again, we all know how that turned out.
The soundtrack to the sinking of our grand democratic experiment into the roiling waters of authoritarian populism was not the melancholy chamber music of James Cameron’s Titanic but the imperious electro-clash of Charli XCX’s Brat, whose adverse effects on the English language semioticians will be studying for years to come: on July 21, when Charli herself declared Kamala Harris “brat,” the word was officially evacuated of all meaning. But how did the ship sink—and did it really? In the wake of the election, our nation’s pundits had no shortage of explanations as to why Harris’s celebrity-studded, $1.5 billion campaign failed to win her a single battleground state, let alone the election. She was held hostage by the left; she tacked too far to the right; she ignored those concerned about the U.S.-sponsored genocide in Palestine; she paid them too much heed; she downplayed concerns about the economy; she didn’t get Beyoncé to perform in Texas; she spent too much time palling around with the daughter of a war criminal; she failed to offer a single thing she would do differently from the war criminal currently in the White House; she had a weird laugh; she declined to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast; and on and on. Was this really the death knell for democracy, or just for a sclerotic Democratic Party beholden to consultants and estranged from its alleged base? Only time will tell, but we have our hunches.
In such a fractious, polarized environment, vanishingly few things seem capable of bringing people together. Well, except for the health insurance industry. Everyone hates that. This loathing burst into full view earlier in December, following the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Under his stewardship, the firm’s profits swelled by $4 billion to reach $16 billion last year, at the same time that UHC became a lightning rod of criticism for the rate at which it denies claims. Which is perhaps why condolences were few and far between, despite the New York Times’ best efforts to whip up sympathy for a salt-of-the-earth family man who was, contrary to all available evidence, “working to make health care better for everyone.” As someone observed on social media, “I’m sorry, prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers.” The schadenfreude reached a fever pitch once the public discovered the suspect was an indisputably attractive twenty-six-year-old of mixed political persuasion by the name of Luigi Mangione. Here, at last, was a figure that could be claimed by most, if not all: an avatar of our disorienting era.
What new complications will 2025 bring? This year offered no shortage of omens: a blood-covered white horse galloped through Central London in the spring. Doom-foreshadowing oarfish have been washing up on the shores of California. Chick-Fil-A announced it’s getting in on the streaming television game. We were on hand to witness all of it. We groused about a good deal of it in the pages of this magazine. As the water swarms the decks and we prepare for the final plunge, why not take a moment to revisit some of the most sustaining salvos, essays, criticism, and fiction The Baffler published over the last year?
Sex and Drugs
By Jeff Weinstein, Issue no. 72
“My prolonged medicalized life continues to confirm the entire health care system’s blindness to anything but profit.”
Steroid to Heaven
By Adrian Nathan West, Issue no. 72
“With steroids, as with Covid-19, as with the factuality of the Holocaust or the shape of the earth, the superabundance of information available on the internet seems to have encouraged rather than inhibited error.”
The Miseducation of Kara Swisher
By Edward Ongweso Jr., March 29
Kara Swisher made a career of dumbing down tech reporting and criticism. She’s a little sorry!
It’s Not What the World Needs Right Now
By Andrew Norman Wilson, Issue no. 73
“It becomes trendy to believe that images within contemporary art contexts can directly achieve the goals of political struggle.”
Dance Dance Revolution?
By Hubert Adjei-Kontoh, Issue no. 73
“Pilfered soul is the name of the game, but the notion that dance music’s emergence from marginalized communities gives it radical political power is cheesy utopianism at best. It merely strikes a pose.”
Endo Days
By Jess McAllen, Issue no. 73
Celebrity endometriosis surgeons have flourished by offering supposed cures in an environment of misinformation and false promises.
Feeling Blessed
By Christopher Hooks, May 8
“Karl is perhaps the only current candidate for sainthood who has drowned his enemies in chlorine gas.”
How German Isn’t It
By Alex Cocotas, May 9
“That tree? It used to be a Jew. That building was once a Jew. That streetlamp was a Jew. And the Jews? It seems they’re all Germans.”
K-Pop
By Dan Piepenbring, Issue no. 74
“Since ketamine and its disso cousins produce a powerful, attractive condition, we’d do well to find a less impoverished way to talk about it.”
I Wanna Be Your Dog
By J.W. McCormack, Issue no. 74
McGruff the Crime Dog was complicit with the war on drugs.
Civil Animals
Fiction by K-Ming Chang, Issue no. 74
“Could you be a girl forever? Could death become your only responsibility?”
Running Amok
By Mary Turfah, June 18
“The pervasive sadism cannot be explained away as the behavior of soldiers at war.”
Live Free or DEI
By Gaby Del Valle, Issue no. 75
“The fight against ‘social justice education’ and the spread of eugenic thought are mutually reinforcing phenomena.”
Who Lost Texas?
By Dave Denison, Issue no. 75
Is it even possible that Texas could once again turn blue?
Bunker Down
By Emily Harnett, Issue no. 76
“If there are any so-called victims of communism in Arkansas, they are surely outnumbered by those killed in that state by the country’s own nuclear arsenal.”
The Unwinding
By Bryce Covert, Issue no. 76
“This was more than an inconvenience—it was a life-threatening event.”
The Kwak Race
Fiction by Manuela Draeger, translated from the French by Brian Evenson, Issue no. 76
“Remembering doesn’t interest me.”
A Rupture in Time
By Sarah Aziza, October 7
“The last year has shown the world what Palestinians have always known: the imperial horizon is nothing less than an enclosure, a cage within which all but a chosen few must submit, or disappear.”
Protect and Serve
By Charlie Dulik, October 9
After helping to elect him, the New York Post has defended Eric Adams post-indictment. What explains their loyalty, and how did they come by their power?
You Had to Be There
By Zoë Hu, November 5
“The idea that the journalism industry supports American war is decried by the left and held as an inviolable duty by the right. But it is not just a matter of complicity or consent manufacture.”