This is the last American Thinker post for 2024, a year that will go down in history as a very strange year. I’ve spent the last hour looking for news stories to comment on, but everything left me cold. I realized that I had different things to say.

I could have written about

• How “transwomen” (i.e., mentally ill men) get to be so (ahem) attractive,


• The AP’s slobbering love for a mentally ill man (aka, a “trans woman”) who is soon to enter the United States House of Representatives,


• Kamala’s probable $20 million payoff from book publishers, a peculiar sum for a losing candidate but one that perfectly matches her outstanding campaign debt,


• A Pentagon appellate panel’s correct, but still horribly painful decision, that the plea deal for the 9/11 killers (23 years after 9/11), giving them life, not death, is legally sound because the leftist-run Pentagon failed big-time, or


• The risible claim from Current Affairs that JD Vance is a privileged Ivy League grad, as if his desperate upbringing and hard work had nothing to do with shaping the man.

Every one of those topics is normally fodder for American Thinker because each peels back the layers of leftism that control our society and that we must address if we are to be a free nation. Each is a reminder that the left never ever lets go of something, nor does it give up, no matter the issue—and that this non-stop leftism operates at both the individual and the institutional level.

By contrast, whenever Republicans win, they relax and show grace to their enemies, something Democrats/progressives never do. That different sense of urgency and focus explains why our cultural trajectory has seen Democrats/progressives have a “two steps forward, one step backward” trajectory for the last 100 years, whether in culture or politics, while Republicans have a “one step forward, two steps backward” trajectory.

Maybe Trump will change that by focusing obsessively on constitutional goals and bringing consequences to lawless people, but that’s not the conservative pattern. So, I don’t want to write about that lest I be both wrong and disappointed.

I could also have written about the crazy year that just ended. Trump’s story alone is an epic one of persecution and triumph, including triumphing over escaping death by (quite literally) a hair’s breadth and staging the most remarkable comeback in political history.

Alternately, I could write about Biden’s fall from grace despite the way that Democrat institutions (political and media) propped him up through lies of both commission and omission.

I could write about Kamala’s wild ride, which saw a singular unqualified woman almost make it to the White House thanks to those same institutions, only to have black swans (e.g., Elon Musk, Scott Presler, Trump himself, and the American people) turn things around.

There are many retrospective topics out there, but I’ve already written about them for the past year and rehashing them today seems pointless.

What I’m left with to write about is my own sense of gratitude:

• Gratitude that I have a job I love and that suits my talents.


• Gratitude that the people for whom and with whom I work are such sterling individuals, for they are defined by strong values, intelligence, knowledge, integrity, kindness, and incredible work ethics.


• Gratitude to our volunteer contributors, who give so generously of their time, energy, knowledge, and intelligence to help create a unique conservative site, one with unusual breadth and depth.


• Gratitude for you, the American Thinker readers, who have been so loyal to us, who support us with your subscriptions and donations, who leave interesting comments, and generally give us the pleasure of knowing that our hard work (and it is hard) goes to people who truly appreciate our efforts.


• Gratitude to the American people for coming to their senses and “throwing the bums out” of the White House and of Congress.

As I head into 2025, I don’t delude myself that Trump will magically make things better. He’s a competent, creative, and courageous man, and he seems to be surrounding himself with good people. Nevertheless (and this is a good thing), he’s not a god or a dictator, which means he doesn’t have omnipotent control over events.

There’ll be plenty of opposition and surprises (some good, some bad) heading Trump’s way, and he’ll have to roll with the punches, handicapped by a razor-thin House margin. Sometimes, we’ll be mad at the necessary political choices he makes, but overall, I am optimistic that things will get better than they have been for the past four years as America becomes freer, safer, saner, and more prosperous than it’s been in a very long time.

So, Happy New Year! May 2025 be a year that brings great happiness and success to all of us.

Image by Grok.