Seven Important Things We Learned In 2022

The year is starting to come to a close, and Jennifer Rubin (pictured) has written an op-ed for The Washington Post detailing seven things we learned in 2022.

1) The media embarrassed themselves by accepting GOP narratives so willingly. Rarely has so much cynical political punditry been so wrong. The public will tune out the House Jan. 6 select committee and the hearings would be boring, many in the media predicted. The 2022 midterms would be a red wave, they said. President Biden’s term was a failure with scant achievements. Yet the select committee’s hearings turned out to be gripping (and perhaps motivated the Justice Department to move more expeditiously in its Jan. 6-related investigations); regardless what happens in Georgia Tuesday, Democrats performed unexpectedly well in the midterms; and Biden racked up some impressive wins (e.g., the Chips and Science Act, the Pact Act, the Inflation Reduction Act). Not coincidentally, each of these colossally wrong takes were Republican talking points that solidified into conventional wisdom. The media must do better.

2) When antidemocratic insurgents tell you who they are, believe them. Democracy really is at risk. Biden, whom the media derided for warning about the MAGA movement’s “semi-fascism” and the dangers of election denial, correctly grasped the threat to constitutional government that former president Donald Trump and his acolytes pose. Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig highlighted this “clear and present danger” in his testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. Sure enough, a flock of election deniers appeared on the ballot this year; Trump threatened there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before” if he were indicted; prominent members of the GOP attacked the FBI for carrying out a lawful search warrant; and Trump eventually called for the “termination” of the Constitution.

3) Authoritarianism is weaker than democracy. Authoritarian regimes this year revealed their inherent brittleness and ineptitude. We witnessed Russia’s disastrous war of aggression against Ukraine; China’s ongoing debilitation from covid-19; Iran’s massive street demonstrations; and Turkey’s worsening economic conditions. Altogether, they underscore the underlying weakness of strongmen who try to crush dissent and oppose the free flow of information. For all their faults, democracies remain best able to handle crises, enlist the imagination of their people and provide opportunity for the greatest number of people.

4) The covid-19 pandemic has created a mental health crisis for youths that will result in long-term suffering if not addressed. While we may have weathered the worst of the covid crisis, thanks to the combination of private-sector scientific excellence and the federal government’s competency, we have not returned to “normal.” The Post reports, “Nationally, adolescent depression and anxiety — already at crisis levels before the pandemic — have surged amid the isolation, disruption and hardship of covid-19.” That, combined with the shortage of mental health professionals and the nearly quarter of a million children who have lost a parent, means it is not realistic to expect schools to manage the problem on their own. A private-public response as substantial as the one for the pandemic is required.

5) American women will not return to the 1950s. The Supreme Court’s notion that the 14th Amendment’s meaning was fixed in the 19th century, thereby excluding women’s rights to bodily integrity, is unsustainable. The court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade triggered a furious political backlash, first evidenced in Kansas’s vote rejecting the removal of abortion rights from the state constitution and again in the midterms, when all five abortion-related measures on state ballots resulted in pro-choice victories. Indeed, pro-choice turnout in the midterms helped Democrats keep the Senate and minimize losses in the House.

6) Social media companies are far less stable than once thought. As Ian Bogost recently wrote for the Atlantic: “Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform.” The speed with which Musk is incinerating his $44 billion investment is particularly shocking. One study found that there are “no signs currently of the #TwitterMigration to platforms such as Mastodon or The Post or the others slowing down at this point.” It’s unknown whether a single alternative or multiple smaller platforms may emerge or whether information-sharing might go back to a more deliberate pace based on direct human interaction. But those who believe that allowing a few moguls to control social media is destructive and antidemocratic have reason to welcome whatever comes next.

7) The courts remain a bulwark for democracy. The Supreme Court, between its radical departure from precedent, the outpouring of partisan rhetoric from its right-wing members and its refusal to adopt a binding set of ethics rules, managed to fall to record-low levels of trust among Americans. Thankfully, there is more to the American judicial system than the high court. Other judges and juries continued to render justice, including tough sentences for the killers of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery; the verdicts and stiff sentences for Jan. 6 insurrectionists; the multiple acquittals in bogus cases brought by special counsel John Durham; and Trump’s repeated failure to find a court that would recognize his “absolute immunity” from civil lawsuits. Yes, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon was widely ridiculed for her indefensible rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. But even then, an appellate court managed to straighten things out. Courts are not perfect, but they provide a key guardrail for our democratic system.