Well, that about wraps it up for 2025. As I write this, the old year only has four days left to produce any delightful — or nasty — surprises before giving way to the new one.

I can’t say 2025 produced much in the way of good news. Many of its events and developments will continue to annoy and impoverish us  well into 2026. Rather than spend an entire column going over those things, allow me to offer a cautionary note on what is or isn’t worth expecting NEXT year.

We live in the age of the permanent campaign, and everywhere I turn I see Democrats, actual Republicans (as opposed to Trumpists), and supposed “independents” looking forward to next November’s midterm congressional elections with hope, even excitement: Democrats will take the US Senate and the House, they hope, thwarting Donald Trump’s policy agenda.

The odds are not with those hopes or that excitement.

The Cook Report, a sort of gold standard when it comes to predicting outcomes, rates only two Senate races as “toss-ups.” Both those seats are currently held by Democrats, who need to pick up a net four seats for a majority. Very unlikely.

The House situation isn’t as dire for Democrats, but Polymarket, a betting/prediction market with a pretty good record, only gives them a 45% chance of flipping three seats to get a majority.

But, let’s suppose that, through some quasi-miraculous chain of events, next November produces a Congress controlled by Democrats.

What changes?

The sitting president has demonstrated — multiple times over an entire first term and the first year of another — that when Congress doesn’t give him what he wants, he just takes it. The court system has proven itself fairly ineffectual at stopping him.

And even if, in a second set of miracles, Trump simmers down or gets routinely thwarted in the courts, it’s not like the Democrats are THAT different from the Republicans.

First-term Trump gave us massive tax increases in the form of tariffs. Joe Biden kept most of those tariffs and even expanded some. Second-term Trump put them on steroids.

First-term Trump escalated every war he inherited from Barack Obama, re-started an old war in Somalia, and handed it all off to Biden, who continued down the same path everywhere except Afghanistan.

And both Republicans and Democrats in Congress let both of them get away with it, while increasing government spending and increasing government debt, introducing new “national security” and surveillance state horrors, etc.

Neither Republican nor Democratic politicians want to fix things even if they could, and they can’t. Various third party and independent candidates might want to, but even given an opportunity they’d likely be unsuccessful.

Government THROUGH politics is not going to get us out of the mess we’ve been putting and keeping ourselves in WITH politics for more than a century now.

Our only hope is that the system collapses — which isn’t likely to happen in the next year — and that we can replace it with something better, which seems even less likely.

Happy New Year, I guess.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On December 17, surrounded by festive holiday decorations, US president Donald Trump delivered an upbeat — one might even say manic — address to the nation, preempting — and enraging fans of — network TV shows such as Survivor, The Floor, and Christmas in Nashville.

While many expected something weighty (perhaps announcement of further military escalation versus Venezuela), what they got was laundry list of Trump’s “accomplishments” since his inauguration in January.

Most of those “accomplishments” — ruinous tariffs on American consumers, immoral and economically damaging immigration raids, etc. — were things we already knew about from watching our bank balances draw inexorably down.

One, however, stood out to me as the most risible. “For the first time in 3,000 years,” Trump said, he’s brought “peace to the Middle East.”

He said that, with as close to a straight face as he ever shows, hours after saluting the flag-draped caskets of two US National Guard members and a civilian interpreter killed in Syria the previous week.

He said that as thousands of Saudi-backed (and therefore US-backed) forces massed on the Yemeni border, preparing for an offensive against one of that country’s dueling political/military factions.

He said that as (US-backed) Israeli forces continued to conduct deadly strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, and raids in Palestine’s occupied West Bank, despite supposed “ceasefires.”

Words can mean more than one thing, but only in the Newspeak Dictionary from George Orwell’s <em>1884</em> might we expect to find any of the above defined as “peace” — or Donald Trump described as a “peace president.”

In his first term as president, Trump escalated every war he inherited and re-started the previous war in Somalia. He “surged” troops into Afghanistan and Syria.

In Syria, he dectupled the US military presence, had Marines fire more artillery rounds than were used in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, briefly feinted toward withdrawing, then decided to stay to “keep the oil.”

In Afghanistan, he eventually negotiated a US withdrawal … but then failed to complete that withdrawal, leaving it to his successor and complaining bitterly about it.

He reneged on the US government’s obligations under the “Iran nuclear deal,” and ordered an Iranian general assassinated while on a diplomatic mission in Iraq.

In Yemen, he ordered the murder of eight-year-old American girl Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki by US Navy SEALs.

The list goes on and on.

In his second term, he’s continued the war in Somalia and on Venezuela (to name but two), while failing on his promise to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war “in 24 hours” (or, to date, at all).

As Christmas approaches, I’m all in favor of “on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” But I find Trump’s claims and promises on that subject less believable than stories about Santa Claus.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On December 18,  US president Donald Trump signed an executive order  — titled “Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research” — which directs US attorney general Pam Bondi to “take all necessary steps to complete the rulemaking process related to rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III” from Schedule I.

To be clear up front, I’m not complaining: ANY relaxation of the federal government’s idiotic standards for, and ANY retreat in its evil war on, marijuana is a win.

It’s a win for patients whose ailments the drug addresses. It’s a win for taxpayers who fork over tens of billions of dollars a year to the DEA to maintain those standards and continue losing that war. And it’s a win for freedom in general.

So, yay Trump.

That said, it’s long past time to “deschedule,” rather than “reschedule,” marijuana.

What’s the difference?

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, a Schedule I drug is one with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Marijuana clearly falls outside that first clause (according to patients, according to doctors, and according to the laws of 41 states).

A Schedule III drug has “currently accepted medical uses” and “a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.”

That leaves the “abuse” and “dependence” considerations … which always have been, are, and will forever remain far outside any legitimate purview of government.

“Abuse” is in the eye of the beholder, and humans find ways to be dependent on all kinds of things.  Here are four: Caffeine. Nicotine. Alcohol. Sugar.

None of which, by the way, are “scheduled” drugs, and none of which have been used by humans in their modern, refined forms for as long as cannabis, aka marijuana.

There’s a reason people call marijuana “weed” — it is one. It grows wild on every continent except Antarctica.

It’s been used both medically and recreationally for thousands of years. Queen Victoria, whose name defined strait-laced moral views of the 19th century, used it for menstrual cramps.

It didn’t become illegal in the US until the 20th century, and the real reasons had far  more to do with keeping alcohol prohibition cops employed after booze became legal again, and suppressing hemp as a competitor to the wood-pulp paper industry, than with “abuse” or “dependence.”

The war on drugs has always been stupid and evil; its application to marijuana particularly so. Far too many people have spent far too many years in prison for possession and use of a common and benign plant, and taxpayers have been mulcted of far too much money to put them there.

Again, yay Trump. Making it easier to develop and deliver effective medicines is laudable. But  when do we get a return to marijuana’s former normalcy?

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY