2024 in the Rearview

(Kelso voice:  BURN!)

Yep, it's officially 2025.  2024 is in the rearview & we're peeling out, kicking up dust as we screech & tear away from it as fast as our oversized gas-guzzling SUVs can carry us.  Nobody wants to relive it, not this soon, but it's vital we learn from the past or we're doomed to repeat it.  2024 was a leap year, and like all leap years it was also a presidential election year and year of the Summer Olympics.  For some reason I've always noted that these three events occur together every 4 years all my life.  In cultural news, Taylor Swift won Album of the Year, Billie Eyelash won Song of the Year and Billy Ray Cyrus's daughter won Record of the Year (what the hell's the difference between "Album" and "Record"?  Oh who gives a crap, nobody buys music anymore because music doesn't exist anymore).  I couldn't sing a single lyric or note from any of these "artist's" catalogs and I'm better for it, but it's good to see so many female winners I guess.  In other music news, Beyonce released a faux-Country album while Toby Keith died from stomach cancer at age 62.  I'm sure these events are not related.

In shitty movie news, Inside Out 2 was the highest grossing film of the year and surpassed The Lion King to become highest-grossing animated film of all time.  Deadpool & Wolverine came in 2nd to become Disney's highest-grossing R-rated film ever, breaking the 34-year record set by Pretty Woman in 1990, while Wicked was #3 of the year.  Blue Ivy Carter made her movie debut in Mufasa: The Lion King, a musical drama produced by Walt Disney Pictures while her daddy dealt with a whole heap of legal trouble.  Again, I've never seen any of these movies (sans the OG Lion King) and have no desire to.  OJ Simpson kicked the bucket in April to mixed reviews and Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me fame followed in May.  Chita Rivera passed at the age of 91 in January and beloved fashion designer Iris Apfel died at 102 years young in March.  

This "walking death rattle" as Jimmy Dore referred to him, made Jimmy Carter look like a Spring chicken.

In political news, the war on Gaza was the big elephant in the room (besides the Republicans) that neither candidate wanted to touch with a 10-foot pole.  Instead, they talked about Haitians eating dogs at the debate and whatever incoherent word salad Biden was serving up at the podium.  He was later seen sporting a Donald Trump hat after "stepping down" to make way for the People's DNC's Choice, Kamala Harris.  That's right: there were no primaries or other democratic pretenses to choose who would be running in his stead, she was just crowned the nominee and they ran with it.  Sort of like they tried to do with Hillary before Wikileaks caught them and that whole shitshow erupted in 2016.  And it bit them (read: us) in the ass when Trump won both times. 

Speaking of Trump, he was shot in the ear at one rally & narrowly missed another alleged assassin's attempt to cut him down at Epstein hangout Mar-A-Lago not long after, neither of which made as much of a splash newswise as you'd expect.  His whole campaign seemed rather "meh," and he even stated this would be his last time running if he didn't win.  Guess all those federal trials and attempts on your life will have that effect.  All this paled in comparison to the truly BIG news that was Diddy, Jay-Z and CEO killer Luigi Mangione.  And drones.  Can't forget the giant drones.  Also of note:  Green Party candidate Jill Stein dunked on Kamala Harris and the Dems throughout election season with some absolutely on-point political ads, memes & talking points, particularly having to do with the issue of the war on Gaza.  They predictably ignored her after trying to sue the Green Party off the ballot in every state like the democracy-hating thugs they are.  

One of many eye-opening posts by the Stein/Ware campaign on Instagram in 2024

In drug news, super-potent synthetics were all the rage as a result of America's neverending War on Drugs.  According to the DEA (I'm not linking to their fucking website):

"Seizures of fentanyl, in both powder and pill form, are at record levels. Over the past two years seizures of fentanyl powder nearly doubled. DEA seized 13,176 kilograms (29,048 pounds) in 2023. Meanwhile, the more than 79 million fentanyl pills seized by DEA in 2023 is almost triple what was seized in 2021. Last year, 30% of the fentanyl powder seized by DEA contained xylazine. That is up from 25% in 2022."  

Well it looks like you're doing a bangup job then, aren't you fellas.  And who do they blame?  Why, China and the Mexican cartels, of course!  They claim these two dark forces have teamed up to create a sort of drug superhighway under which Americans are trapped.  Which we all know is bullshit.  We could stop this unnecessary carnage tomorrow with the stroke of a pen by legalizing less potent drugs like heroin, morphine, cocaine, amphetamine, meth and other opioids/stimulants including plant-based ones (coca, opium poppies, ephedra, khat, etc).  Regulating the drug supply for purity and educating the public on safer use would eliminate the adulteration problem, take foreign cartels, manufacturers & dealers out of the equation completely & bring the profits home to local governments where they could be poured back into funding science-based drug treatment programs & other beneficial community projects.  But the DEA and other 3-letter agencies have no desire to actually stop killing us, so we'll keep dying in 2025 and beyond.

Of course the news stories that will have the biggest effect on humankind and the planet--that being climate change, bird flu's steady inroads toward human-to-human transmission and the eternal capitalist destruction of the planet via pollution/carbon emissions/private equity firms buying up affordable housing like trailer parks went mostly unreported or underreported.  This was not merely a bug but a feature of the corporate-owned media's lousy reporting.  It's what you can expect when like 6 billionaires own every single news outlets in the country.  

...really?  THIS is the graphic you choose for the most deadly flu in existence?  🤦🏻‍♀

Well that was depressing.  Here's hoping things start looking up in the new year.  Something tells me they won't though.  Americans have this thing where they'd rather go down with a familiar old sinking ship in a blaze of self-righteous retardation than take a chance & try something different by hopping onto a new & unfamiliar life raft... even if that life raft would, you know, SAVE THEIR LIVES.  (See:  All the "faith over fear" folks who literally died to prove a point during the height of COVID, only admitting they were horribly wrong when it was too late).