The Year of Failing Dangerously
Donald Trump Made 2025 Bad for Every American
First, a note:
It’s my last piece of 2025, and before we begin, I wanted to share a brief, funny story: my writing is my writing. I don’t crutch it with AI. I do have spelling and grammar checking, naturally, but the rest, for better or worse, is me. That cannot be said about my AI-generated illustrations for these articles, obviously.
Today, I wrapped up this piece and batted the title around with Renee for a bit, then asked for an AI-generated pic that matched the story and title. I wasn’t supposed to be in the picture, but this absolute howler ensued, and I’m using it because it’s hilarious. Enjoy!
The rolling tide of misery and chaos imposed on us by the crapulous ubiquity of Donald Trump in our lives, politics, culture, and society always has one weird trick that his fans, allies, enablers, business partners, wives, and mistresses mutter like an incantation: “This time, it’s going to be better.”
In 2025, we put that myth to bed, once and for all. It was, to tweak the title of a great Christopher Koch novel (and subsequent movie) that I love, The Year of Failing Dangerously. My catalog of this year’s failings is, necessarily, incomplete. For that, I apologize, but this is a Substack post, and not a Dostoevsky novel. There are sins and excesses here that I can’t catalog in one piece.
We were famously promised a second coming if Donald Trump was returned to power. A Trumpian “golden age” was an article of faith for his supporters and the vast media apparatus devoted to affirming even the most ludicrous claims to waft from his constantly flapping lie hole.
