Reflections on 2024 and Thoughts on Making It Through 2025

Last year at this time on my Substack I declared 2023 to be "the year reality died." This year proved my pessimism, as Donald Trump was elected president due to millions perceiving an economic downturn that wasn't there, rising immigration as it was falling, and spikes in crime as it was decreasing. Narratives and memes are the coin of the realm now. With the rise of generative AI we are facing a future where all discourse is going to be reduced to computer-generated slop being slung about ad infinitum. Elon Musk buying the presidency is a sign that the tech overlords are running the show now, both economically and politically. Even more than when Thatcher said it, There Is No Alternative. 

In the midst of this collective insanity I have been trying to stick to the core, as Lao Tzu says. I resolved last year to keep a log of the books I read and films I watched, and actually kept it up. These logs have allowed me to retain more insights, and be a little more intentional in my habits. I read fifty-six books of varying lengths and quality. I decided not to count the films, but I engaged in little projects, like sequentially viewing all of the films of Wes Anderson and David Lynch. This gave me far greater insights into both of them. 

In terms of my book reading, here's a mini-awards show:

Best Old Novel I Read For The First Time in 2024

John Williams: Stoner

Best New Novel in 2024 that I Read in 2024

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Long Island Compromise

Most Engaging Re-Read of a Book I Had Read Before That I Re-read in 2024

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Best New History Books I Read in 2024

Beverly Gage, G-Man and John Ganz, When the Clock Broke

Best Old History Book I First Read in 2024

Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul

Best Genre Fiction I Read For the First Time in 2024

Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box

Best Genre Fiction I Re-Read in 2024

Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

Book I Read For the First Time in 2024 that Made the Biggest Impact

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

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As a child I first really started digging into history by reading the medieval Europe book in a world history for kids series. This book gave me an interest in the fall of the Roman Empire and the early medieval period that I carry to this day. I was fascinated by the monks who managed to keep learning going amidst the complete collapse of society. Being a nerdy, pious child misfit, these monks were the kinds of heroes I aspired to be. I've been thinking a lot about that recently, since it feels like we are enduring a massive barbarian invasion of our collective culture. In 2025 I have resolved to keep reading, to take the time to read complex and difficult texts, and to spend more of my time in the world of books than in the online world on a daily basis. 

For that reason I almost feel stupid to be writing this all down online. After all, I intentionally wrote my own film log for myself instead of putting it all on Letterboxd and kept my book log private instead of joining Goodreads. I guess I am doing so to encourage all of us to lean into our own inner lives in the coming year, rather than trapping our psyches in the constant game of comparison and clout-chasing demanded by social media. The internet has its good uses, ones that were more apparent to me in the time of the blogosphere when I first started doing all of this. Back then it felt like I was getting to share ideas and form community when I logged on, instead of being consumed by rage and resentment. If we could somehow return to that version of the internet I feel our lives would be much better.

Since the election I have been asking myself if I am giving in to the temptations of quietism, effectively giving up on engaging with the world rather than fighting for a better one. I am realizing that I can actually undergo a kind of "inner migration" that will make my capacity to resist what's coming stronger. In the coming year I have resolved to keep my mind sharp, to think rather than react, and to trust my mental instincts honed through decades of contemplation over whatever narratives are being spewed by the online hive mind. We are headed into the fire, it is time to steel ourselves if we want to survive. 

Postcard from New Haven

I am writing this from New Haven, Connecticut, a place I have some happy memories attached to. I also love a gritty port town, especially one with excellent pizza and used bookstores. This time I am here with a group of students from my high school competing in a model congress competition at Yale. While I have enjoyed walking around the campus, eating at Frank Pepe's and other fine dining establishments, browsing the Grey Matter bookstore, and drinking Common Grounds' coffee, I am feeling pangs of dread and a certain kind of spiritual suffocation. 

Some of this comes from students in the model congress seeing the whole thing as some kind of joke. During the presidential election at the start a student gave a lazy, tossed-off speech threatening to invade Canada. Evidently he thought this was funny. It was telling that the three girls in the running constructed serious speeches full of ideas, while two of the four boys recited MAGA rhetoric without proposing anything concrete. It seemed to encapsulate the rising tide of misogyny in this country that reacts to girls being better at a lot of things because they actually work hard by trying to subjugate them instead of demanding more from young men. 

Other dread comes from the stark contrasts one sees walking around New Haven. Our hotel is near the Green, where one often sees homeless people and poor and working-class residents catching the bus just two blocks from a university with a $41 billion endowment. I have seen starker contrasts of wealth and poverty in Manhattan, but the fact that the contrast comes from a "non-profit" educational institution just seems to make it worse. The whole scene lays this country's failures bare.

Even worse, today is the dreaded "Santa Con," when America's stupidest and loudest suburban frat and sorority types converge on city centers to get drunk and act even more brain dead than they do on an average day. Walking the streets around my hotel feels suffocating, and not just because of the clouds of cheap weed smoke. Perhaps it's fitting that Trump has returned to the White House, since he reflects the trashy, decadent nature of the nation he is about to rule over. 

It probably hasn't helped my mood that my big used book store score was a copy of Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia. I have felt it to be quite bracing, and I maybe am absorbing his deep critique of American life at a particularly bad time. Since the election I have been embracing a fundamental pessimism about certain aspects of American life. At base, I think it's obvious that most people have a completely nihilistic attitude about public life and what they owe to others. Much as Adorno worried, the processes of more modern capitalism have shredded individuality and reduced it into nothing more than consumer desire. Life will go on, there will still be good books, pizza, and coffee in the world, but I don't expect much of anything to get better soon. As the last few days have made clear, the younger generation is most definitely not going to save us. There are plenty of exceptional young people, but they are being eaten up by the ever-growing adherents to nihilism. That's my sad report from New Haven.