It’s the end of another year, which means a deluge of dire looks back on the various atrocities of the last go around the sun. As is my duty, I have to add to the pile. But does it all have to be quite so sad? Do we have to dutifully trawl through the muck to find some elusive meaning to what we’ve been forced to endure? Unfortunately, yes. It was a tough year (again) and we met it all with a shrug. As we’ve all been made punishingly aware, Dictionary.com’s word of 2025 is “6-7,” a viral meme slogan which is technically two words. Pretty cheeky of the Dictionary to cheat on their own assignment.

How tragically emblematic of the year we just witnessed. We’re all too apathetic to even complain about getting swindled by a gaggle of word snobs. “Apathy” would have been a better choice for word of the year, considering how we’ve collectively shrugged at every dispiriting development of the last 12 months. Nicki Minaj popped up at the Turning Point USA conference to kiki with Erika Kirk and the most I could muster was “I guess she’ll do a concert at the Trump-Kennedy Center soon.”

The year started with the back-to-back monstrosities of the Los Angeles wildfires and the second presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. I’d say it was all downhill from there, but we’ve already rolled down, hit every tree on the way, and ended up getting mauled by a pack of hungry........

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