2025’s End.
A special comment.
It feels like an eternity ago, but 2025 opened with two acts of terror. A vehicle-ramming and shooting on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that killed 14 people and injured dozens more. In Las Vegas, 37-year-old veteran Matthew Livelsberger was driven mad by ChatGPT and news reports about drones and UFOs or something, and detonated a Cybertruck in front of the Trump Tower International Hotel. Ill portents. By the end of the year, the podcaster Charlie Kirk was killed, Principles First received a bomb threat, masked ICE thugs visited untold violence on Americans and migrants alike, Washington DC hosted a North Korea-style military parade for the president’s birthday, the government shut down for months, and a brave man and woman of the United States National Guard were shot outside Farragut West Metro—in addition to the usual string of school shootings and terror. I have no reason to imagine 2026 will be less shadowed.
Though I must—the calendar is a tyrant—I am still not ready to review this year. I have not finished writing “Throat Goat Donald Owes America the Epstein Files,” or “No Kings 2: Rise of the Trump Kingdom”—not because I am lazy or distracted, but because that damnable Donald Trump and his sycophants will not cease generating new outrages long enough to let me properly document the last ones. Just this morning, The Wall Street Journal broke news that Mr. Trump was having masseuses do “outcalls” to Jeffrey Epstein—on the house! Gratis! A man cannot even go to Costco to pick up a Kirkland brut for the holiday without nearly missing a story. I understand why The Parnas Perspective’s Aaron Parnas and The Bulwark’s Tim Miller look like the world’s most beleaguered men.
That relentless pace was one of the worst lessons of 2025. With this Trump administration, quantity is more useful than quality. “Sloppy Steve” Bannon, Jeffrey Epstein’s public relations flack, told us in 2018 their strategy was to “flood the zone with shit.” Like a fool or a citizen of a functioning democracy, I sifted through that sewage looking for patterns, for meaning, to make this make sense. But there is always another breaking event that recontextualizes everything I thought I understood. I hardly sleep anymore.
And it is shit. Last night, Mr. Trump complained he deserved his name on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts more than the Kennedys did and retweeted attacks on the family, on the same day JFK’s granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg died of cancer at 35. And as I tucked myself into bed, he continued to rant like a sleep paralysis demon: “[O]ur Country is ‘hotter’ than ever before. Isn’t it nice to have a STRONG BORDER, No Inflation, a powerful Military, and great Economy??? Happy New Year!” None of this is true—the economy has crashed out under Mr. Trump’s illegal tariffs, our military is misused and demoralized, prices continue to rise, and employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics seem worse than we know, with every new month bringing more downward revisions to the previous month’s “juked” job report. Under his watch, we wake each day to a worse world.
When 2024 closed, my New Year’s advice for Democrats was: Be worse. Be less inhibited. Drink more. Smoke more. Get back in touch with American vices. Stop being so damned nice about the dismantling of the Republic. Some heard this call. Governors Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker understood. Even Joe Walsh has evolved into as strident a defender of liberal democracy as you will find, posting daily that the next Democratic president must tear down Mr. Trump’s bullshit ballroom. He is correct.
Some Democratic voters wasted the year practicing excessive self-care. “I’m not even watching the news, can’t keep up with that shit, gotta keep my head down, focus on me, take care of my own people, protect my peace.” No more. 2026 is an election year. Midterms are coming. Put away the video games. Cancel Paramount+, Netflix, HBO, Crunchyroll, whatever kills your time. Get rid of your couch—you should not need it (and whatever you do, do not leave it anywhere Jim-Dave Vance might find it). My advice for 2026: Be prolific.
What does it mean to be prolific? The dictionary tells us: “Marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity.” ABC: always be communicating.
We are at a disadvantage because we want to be accurate, to be right, to know what we are talking about before we open our mouths. That works against us. This regime spams social media with the vilest content at every hour and uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the production of lies. Their comms team steals music from artists like Sabrina Carpenter, MGMT, and Olivia Rodrigo, and slaps it on snuff films of Customs and Border Protection and ICE agents beating and arresting immigrants and protesters, and they post them across the whole Internet. I am convinced the government’s social media teams are abusing gas station ephedrine and biker crank. How else do they maintain this volume?
To supplement that, MAGA trolls on Twitter get paid for engagement, so it is best practice for them to vomit “hot takes” as fast and as often as their texting thumbs permit. So, we are processing yesterday’s garbage while they are busy creating the next tragedy.
I was disturbed in 2024 by how much of 2015-2021 America forgot—I trusted we had an enduring national memory, that what happens once has happened forever, but so much of that history was recorded in tweets and digital ephemera that disappeared into the aether. Mr. Trump was disqualified the moment he descended that golden elevator and called Mexicans rapists, yet somehow that was forgiven and made license for worse evils. To me, this is a testament against grace.
So, this must not be digital-only. The physical world is also a forum. I have previously advised: Talk loudly about politics on your cell phone in the middle of the grocery store checkout line. Purchase a “DONALD IS A BITCH” or “FUCK DOGE” T-shirt and wear it in public. Put your thoughts directly into the eyes of strangers. Continue to do this.
I do not know how one legally replicates what Trump supporters did in 2021 when they covered every gas pump with stickers of Joe Biden saying, “I did that.” That was vandalism. I would never deface my corner gas station—the proprietor is a good man and has always helped me when I needed it. But we should look to that for inspiration.
In 2026, create friction. The Trump-Vance regime wants its authoritarian takeover to proceed without resistance. It must not be. If their “New Year” is half as “happy” and successful as 2025, liberty will die, as the cliché goes, on our watch. So, when you are sitting in a Jiffy Lube lobby, and they are playing Fox News—do not only roll your eyes. Say: “This is bullshit.” Say: “Turn that off. I don’t want to hear it, and neither does anyone else.” Say: “Have you started working on my car? Or can I just leave? Because I’ll find a new mechanic before I watch Fox.” Let that be your rule: When you typically roll your eyes, say something instead.
Buy a laser printer—a good, sturdy Brother—and print articles from The New York Times, The Bulwark, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, perhaps even Partisan Hex (don’t forget to like and subscribe!), and mail them to relatives who need to read them. Leave them on your neighbor’s doorstep, on train seats, in McDonald’s bathrooms. Take a cue from the nightclub promoters of old and tuck them under windshield wipers.
Somewhere in this country tonight, while you pop champagne and watch balls drop, people will do invisible work to resist this administration, to protect America from its president. But are there enough of them, and are they strong enough to do this work without thanks? They could use the knowledge that there are more of us in their corner. If “Moms for Liberty” or other MAGA infiltrators are coming to your school board—are your weeknights free? Can you go? Can you speak? Can you support those who will? What can you do? Try to spread one message of resistance each day. Like a diet, exercise plan, or budget, if you make a habit of it now, the results will be greater than if you start scrambling come summer.
I want to thank my readers for supporting this project, though to be truthful, it is my hope that this project provides support for my readers. At times, I have felt sheepish receiving messages asking if I had been black bagged yet, when I was in fact just struggling to finish the final details of a project, but it is reassuring to know that I am not alone. On the May 1 “Mayday” rally in DC, National Education Association President Becky Pringle recalled a battle cry from Brazil’s antifascist resistance between 2019 and 2022: “No one lets go of anyone’s hand.” She urged us to let that be our call. That can be more difficult for me than I would admit if I were not day-drinking mimosas. (How I long for Santana Champ again!) Not because I cannot perform acts of solidarity—that is easy for me—but because, as a chain-smoking donkey in a leather jacket, I do not assume I will need it from others. So, thank you—I appreciate you bearing with me through this project.
Stay safe tonight. Don’t drink and drive.