Only the lonely?
This is the part where we’re supposed to look back with a reflective eye on the year that was: the achievements amidst challenging times, the breakthroughs by those who persisted despite the disappointments and setbacks, the dreams dashed, and the records smashed.
We lamented the erosion of our freedoms; the corruption of our public officials; the devaluation of our currency; the murders of journalists around the world—240 Palestinian journalists alone killed by Israel; the destruction wrought by typhoon after typhoon; the obscenity of wealth accumulation by the billionaire and trillionaire class, joined by our greedy congressmen; the unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the equally unstoppable descent of the population into intellectual sloth and stupidity; the creeping whiteness of the cast of “Saturday Night Live”—and the unexpected departure of Bowen Yang.
But wait, there’s more
2025, in fact, was the year of gaslighting, amped up. When we turned to alternative sources of news in real time, because legacy media–the old reliables such as CNN, Sky News, BBC, Washington Post, and the New York Times, to name a few, had lost all credibility. When we understood that we were watching a present-day holocaust in Gaza being livestreamed amidst the impotence of most nations and the failure of all the institutions created by the Western powers, precisely to prevent such a thing from happening again.
When those peacefully protesting a genocide were brutally beaten and arrested, while those committing said genocide were still feted in Washington and London. When we realized that there were still people in the world for whom genocide was not a red line at all.
When COP30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, took place in Brazil, “amid stormy political waters,” according to the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, and yet, the demand for fossil fuels continues unabated. When we discovered that we weren’t in fact a poor country, just a shamelessly plundered one.
In December 2024, a man was convicted in France—not just for repeatedly raping his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, while she was passed out on drugs he gave her—but for pimping her out as well to legions of men over a period of several years.
As if that were not horrifying enough, a year later, in December 2025, the released, albeit heavily redacted, Epstein files revealed that the real corridors of power are trod upon by an elite coterie of mostly men who trade intelligence secrets, decide wars, bankroll and skew scientific research, shape policy, and, in addition, evidently have a propensity for paedophilia, for whom which enablers around the world are more than willing to procure minors, some as young as seven years old.
Where to turn to for hope
This is also the part when we cast a hopeful eye at the year to come, project our fervent wishes for the usual—peace, equality, inclusivity, progress, justice, yadda yadda—while the world burns and billionaires ponder colonizing Mars in all seriousness. While politicians promise change but have neither the balls nor the interest in overhauling the system they benefit so handsomely from.
Where is one to find hope in a landscape of such desolation and despair? What does one do when confronted by ignorance, apathy, and naked racism? How does one protest when dissent is increasingly being criminalized? Or when the suspect who holds all the secrets–and salted away her own billions–in a government kickback controversy jumps of a cliff in an apparent and exquisitely timed suicide?
And how does one stay true to one’s principles amidst relentless pressure to consume and conform without understanding the consequences of our choices on impacted communities?
A lonely crusade
It sometimes seems to me that striving to remain principled can be a lonely crusade, especially when other people seem to be unaffected by or simply uninterested in the issues I often raise in my columns.
Do people not understand, I wonder, and do they not connect the dots and see how they’re affected, too? Would they ever be able to realize that so much of what they know has been deeply and slyly propagandized to believe as truth falls apart by applying just a little bit of critical thinking?
As Aldous Huxley wrote in “Brave New World,” “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
He also wrote, “If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” Perhaps. Yet one of the most wondrous discoveries I made this year is that there is a community of us such lonely souls.
