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The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.

Every seventh cigarette, I think about how I am an idiot. 

Do I even need to mention the mass death? Smokers’ life expectancy is 10 years lower than that of nonsmokers; 1 in 5 deaths in the United States is related to smoking. Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death in the US. Have you recently read a list of diseases that kill you? I did—because I looked up what cigarettes do to me. The usual sources of expiration listed unhappily in paragraph two of an obit—lung cancer (of course), but also coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, the flu, and COPD—are all caused by smoking.

I pride myself on not being too health-conscious. But I am also not a fool. It is obvious that my lungs are becoming mottled with black soot like some 19th-century chimney sweep when I ask, “Any chance I could bum one?” outside every bar. You can feel your heart clog, and your body weaken, when you smoke. Let’s not be naive. All smokers know this. Some don’t care. Many do. Over 50 percent of smokers want to quit. But only around 8 percent of us successfully and permanently do.

Still, during that Seventh Cigarette of Shame, I’ll be honest: I don’t think of my health. It is the small humiliations of smoking that drag me down. I ponder my leftist credibility as I partake in a useless “pleasure” that is connected with labor practices—and political money—that are often evil. (I judge a DoorDash user’s choice to join the worst of capitalism, yet I don’t ever judge a smoker. How lazy is that?) I shamefully think about the fact that I am being duped—my consent manufactured!—by

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