2024: The year that was*

Then morning in America again

Jeffrey Denny

It’s always darkest before the dawn, goes the spirit-lifting affirmation coined in 1650 by poet and influencer Thomas Fuller.

At the start of 2024, it seemed the darkness was fading to blackout for America.

But today, as 2025 dawns, it’s a bright new day.

Looking back, I still can’t believe what happened. It was like a dream.

It began when presidential front-runner Donald Trump was forced to step aside.

Turned out, his increasingly angry, incoherent ranting, raving and rambling about dictating, revenging and destroying democracy were finally diagnosed as severe onset of age-related mental decline.

MAGAs loved and laughed at his antics until it became clear even to his most insensitive yahoos it was a pathetic cry for help. Sad.

State and federal prosecutors dropped the 91 criminal counts against Trump as he was declared unfit mentally to stand trial. His legal team successfully argued that Trump’s incomprehensible self-destructive behavior, including public attacks on judges and courts while on trial, clearly demonstrated he was unable to understand the legal proceedings and play a role in his own defense.

Political observers suggested Trump’s outrageous behavior was a brilliant “art-of-the-deal” legal strategy all along to avoid certain comeuppance and play victim.

Whatever the truth, Trump wound up wandering his Mar-A-Lago estate under psychiatric care, raging, twitching and cackling like Commissioner Dreyfus driven insane by Inspector Clouseau.

After 2,000 ballots, frantic Republicans pandering to MAGAs who proudly rebranded as “The Worst America Can Get” nominated Tucker Carlson.

The disgraced former top Fox primetime personality and current Russian oligarch accepted remotely from his Black Sea dacha. Carlson also announced his running mate, Ted Nugent, patron hard rock saint of traditional family value MAGAs known for his classic love ballad, “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.”

Meanwhile, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, President Joe Biden flipped the script and rigged the 2024 election.

Just like in olden days in a smoke-filled back room, Biden threw his delegates to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had his acceptance speech locked and loaded since Biden first stumbled on the steps of Air Force One like all presidents do. Even Ronald Reagan did.

The Democrats’ pick made Newsom only the second presidential nominee in Gen Z history to never attend a presidential candidate debate or even try much to be nominated. He was also the first ineligible for elder care.

The smoke filling the back room was not from costly cigars but from medical-quality dank, which made Newsom’s VP pick, Jon Stewart, hilariously sensible to everyone there. Except Stewart, who got paranoid.

Shades of the 1968 DNC and 2020 J6 riots, a dozen Harvard student progressive insurrectionists attempted to disrupt the delegate count for Newsom. Their goal was to overthrow the racist capitalism system that paid for their elite $400,000 bachelor degrees in social justice but failed to fund Hamas.

The protestors’ powerful signs and chanted slogans about what they wanted and when they wanted it (now) changed millions of hearts and minds not whatsoever. But the protestors still felt respected and heard as they expressed their superior moral certainty, identity and agency.

Fox News featured live footage of the protest on continuous feed to exaggerate the danger to America and confirm for their lie-lapping viewers that liberals are their mortal enemies.

Viewers felt heard by Fox News to confirm why they need complete gun freedom to Dirty Harry anyone who triggers them by appearing Antifa, BLM, on their porches, or Socialists coddling criminals and defunding the police.

Whatever happened to Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley?

Harris remained as “Waldo” as ever.

She was last located pleading for air time with Gen Z NPR Sunday Edition producers who never heard of Harris and don’t care whatever a vice president of the United States is because it’s not about them or progressive causes.

Harris only wanted to speak passionately from her talking points developed by her wearied staff who struggle to give her what she wants to say about issues she cares deeply about.

As for Haley, she went Waldo after accepting Trump’s invitation to be his running mate.

The internet said she was last spotted at an oceanfront luxury retreat and spa on Kiawah Island, South Carolina. Haley was there for six months of soul detoxing before she returned to the public fray to make big money speaking and appearing before running for president in 2028. Like Republicans smeared Hillary for doing but are more gifted in shamelessly rationalizing when one of theirs does it.

In other 2024 news:

The internet finally broke

For reals this time.

It happened when, on a single day, Taylor left Travis for Woody Allen’s head in a large kosher pickle jar, the New York Jets under Coach Lucifer were headed to Super Bowl for the first time since Taylor was merely a gleam in her alien parents’ eyes, and AI, being smarter than humans, shut down social media before it completely destroyed society.

LGBTQIA+ added P for polyamory

CODA (Council of Diverse Amory) voted to add a consonant recognizing a sexual identity that’s sweeping the nation, rejecting the popular P for Pickleball enjoyed by few if any self-respecting LGBTQIA+.

Now polyamorists must be included in all DEI protected classes and industry conferences and somehow legally given preference in college acceptance.

Throuples also need to be accepted at the Thanksgiving family table and guest bedrooms even if it’s awkward and triggers traditional gay grandparent couples who still believe marriage is between two people.

Ukraine beat Russia

In soccer, love and war.

A new Russian Revolution tossed Putin like the czars before him.

Then more Russian mayhem ensued leading to a new dictator.

Tucker disappeared

After his GOP nomination, he went Waldo like Harris and Haley.

Everyone searched for Tucker’s trademark elite prep school bow tie and smarmy visage.

He wasn’t in a Russian prison being Harvey Weinsteined by babushkas. Or bound and gagged in another oligarch’s Bentley trunk until he sold out America a lot more. Or so far up Trump’s alimentary canal he could floss the former president’s decaying molars.

The broken internet says Tucker’s on the FBI witness protection program and running a food truck at the Eagle Pass, Texas, migrant crossing.

Snark if you’re a bully, but someone by the name of Cucker Tarlson is making the most delicious authentic picaditas, tlayuda and pambazo this side of the border. His bandito disguise is as fake as his facial expressions, but you have to admire how he seizes opportunity.

The climate cooled

Scientists declared Earth is safe from becoming the sun. This victory over billionaire oil came thanks to years of climate action including:

— Shaming by morally superior climate activists;

— Sorting trash into 27 bins that end up at landfills together;

— Installation of solar panels and other costly and quickly obsolete advanced home technologies that few Americans can afford to install or retrofit;

— EV cars that like bad boyfriends you can’t take everywhere and make you anxious as their social battery depletes; and,

— Energy-saving CFL light bulbs that make everyone look like Zombie Apocalypse survivors, but not the good kind.

Zillennials finally adulted

They eased up obsessing about themselves, their terrible generational plight, and how they’re terrified, traumatized, attacked, victimized or suffering nonclinical anxiety from every slight against their personhood whether real, perceived or wholly deserved.

What happened is they started having children. Gen A is really whiny and entitled.

***

Alas, this morning in America 2025 was all a dream.

But as Gino, the Edward Scissorhands-loving Barber of Seinfeld, sighed, hey, it’s a beautiful dream.

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer. *Hat tip to Tom Lehrer.