Shortly before the 2024 election, I listed “Fourteen Concerns About Trump 2.0.” This was, as I said at the time, largely an attempt to gain comfort through articulation. It wasn’t a warning; it was an attempt to process.
Now it’s fourteen months later. The first year of this parodically dystopian administration has come to a close, and I was curious what I’d gotten right and wrong.
That’s particularly true because, on the Left in particular, there is a tendency to catastrophize. For example, I had several friends certain that Donald Trump was set to invoke the Insurrection Act last April and effectively suspend the constitution, and that there would be tanks on the streets of major cities by now. That didn’t happen. Many, many other terrible things did happen, of course, but that didn’t. I think it’s worth seeing where we feared too little and where we feared too much, both for our own epistemic humility (which can bring at least a little peace of mind) and for evaluating the threats and opportunities before us.
So I took a fresh look. To my surprise, I got much more right than I got wrong. Plenty of things took me by surprise — I don’t think anyone had the sudden and illegal demolition of the East Wing of the White House on their 2025 bingo card, for example. But weirdly, a lot of this year has turned out roughly as I thought it might.
On the one hand, democracy is fragile, norms have been eroded, the media discourse is worse than it was, many many many people have been harmed, and America’s standing in the world has been severely damaged.
On the other hand, especially after the 2025 election, it’s now possible to see some (though not all) of the past year’s horrors as potentially correctable. Trump’s worst policies are deeply unpopular. The supposed disarray of the Democratic Party has been greatly exaggerated. There are causes for tentative hope, and mostly, as I’ve written before, for epistemic humility in the face of entirely justified fear and rage. That is what I hope Both/And is about: the nexus between spirituality and politics, the mind and the world.
So, here are those fourteen concerns, and how right or wrong they’ve proven to be.
1. Malevolence. In the first Trump administration, I noted that “Trump’s incompetence saved us from his malevolence.” But, I said, that wouldn’t happen this time. “Project 2025’s hiring process for the next administration has already been going on for months, and Trump will be able to reclassify thousands of civil service jobs, fire competent people who know what they’re doing, and replace them with thousands of dedicated ideologues, theocrats, nationalists, tech-libertarians, and plutocrats.”
This turned out to be true, and worse than I had predicted. I did not predict that DOGE would march into town, dismantle congressionally-mandated agencies, and wreak general havoc (all while completely failing to save money or increase efficiency, if those were ever the goals, which they clearly were not). But I was correct in predicting that Trump’s second administration would not repeat the chaos of the first.
And yet — there has still been more incompetence than I had predicted, which has been a saving grace. Trump’s DOJ has bungled the concealment of the Epstein Files in the most ludicrous ways (e.g. using an easily-undone Adobe blackout feature). Trump’s own worst instincts have cost him support, as when he attempted to dance on Rob Reiner’s still-undug grave. Trump’s approval ratings are in the toilet, and if the 2026 election were held today, Democrats would retake the House and perhaps the Senate. Turns out, incompetence has once again been a strong bulwark against malevolence.
2. Putinland, in which, in the words of Peter Pomerantsev, “nothing is true and everything is possible.” Turned out almost exactly as predicted. The zone is flooded with shit, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, Fox News won’t report on ICE or Trump in the Epstein Files, and Americans live in different cognitive universes. There is a never-ending torrent of absolute lies dominating the discourse.
3. Ecological disaster. Exactly as predicted: a complete evisceration of climate policies, essential environmental regulations, economically smart investments in renewable energy, and science as we know it. It’s so bad, no one’s even talking about it anymore. Just as I wrote, “it’s like species-wide suicide.”
4. Vulgarity and stupidity. “Americans are increasingly mean and increasingly dumb… and MAGA is like revenge of the high school bullies— a movement led by the worst, dumbest, most brutish people you went to school with.” Worse than predicted. I wouldn’t have expected Dr. Oz, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth to be wielding actual power. I didn’t predict MAGA face. Just, really, the worst and most transparently mediocre people have the most power. This wasn’t the case under Reagan or the Bushes. We are being governed by sycophants, morons, and a handful of truly sinister villains (Vought, Miller, etc). I try not to dwell on this too much.
5. Democracy. “I do think there will be a 2028 election, but I don’t know if it will be possible for a Democrat to win it because of widespread manipulation of the electoral process; it may look more like a Soviet election.” I still believe this, as I wrote about here. So far, tracking predictions.
6. Courts. Slightly worse than expected. As I wrote about in March, I thought the Supreme Court would step in as certain red lines (e.g. open defiance of judicial orders) were crossed. And they have done so at times. But not at others.
7. Theocracy. Tracking expectations. Quote, “Forget anything trans-affirming; I expect national bans on all transgender protections and medical interventions, and a declaration that trans people are mentally ill.” People said I was exaggerating about this, and I got ridiculed for saying so on CNN. Well, it’s happened. There have also been a lot of quieter steps, often on the state level.
8. Mass deportations and xenophobia. “Which also entails mass human rights abuses, family separations, and federal agents going house to house in places where illegal/undocumented/unauthorized migrants are ‘suspected’ of hiding.” This has unfolded exactly as I predicted: not more, not less. There was never any way to conduct these deportations without a massive dragnet snaring many innocent people. And while I could not have predicted CECOT, or deportations to African countries, or the acquiescence of the Supreme Court, the contours of what this would look like were clear a year ago.
I didn’t predict how many Americans would cheer it on, however. Not a majority — most reasonable centrists are horrified by the ICE militia’s activities. But most Americans don’t even see them, thanks to MSM under-reporting and RWM de facto censorship. Bari Weiss’s 60 Minutes debacle is just the most visible example; Fox News never, ever reports on ICE raids or innocent people imprisoned for weeks in inhumane conditions. It is quite ironic that “conservative” media is now Soviet-style media.
9. Ethno-nationalism. “We’ve had globalization, huge technological change, and mass migration over the last few decades, and “human nature” is fighting back.” This certainly seems true.
10. White nationalism and racism. I was kind of off on this one. I thought that with the J6 rioters released, we’d see more anti-Black racism – “The Overton Window will continue to shift to the Right, with genetic theories of race differences reappearing (they already have), holocaust denial and conspiracy theorizing being mainstreamed (they already have too), and people with ties to white nationalists being included in Trump’s orbit (ditto).” We definitely have seen some of that, but so far it’s been garbed in anti-DEI or anti-Woke rhetoric, not as overt as right-wing antisemitism, which now seems more pervasive and prevalent than ever.
11. Increased Inequality. “Trump’s populist rhetoric is bullshit, because it is accompanied by economic policies that are radically anti-populist, that enrich the very richest.” Totally borne out in 2025, with the Big Beautiful Bill’s gigantic tax break for the top 1% and shredding of healthcare coverage for the bottom 50%. The one thing I hadn’t expected was for this to percolate through as much as it has. People hate the BBB, and “affordability” is now seen as a core Democratic talking point. Meanwhile, there’s a socialist mayor-elect in New York who won on kitchen-table economic issues. There may be some hope yet on this front.
12. Tech Dystopia. In October 2024, I wrote “I’m neither an expert on AI nor a doomsayer about it, and I have no informed opinion about Crypto, but I can say that empowering Big Tech to ‘move fast and break things’ seems particularly unwise at this juncture.” Well, I’m still no expert but I have done a few deep dives on these subjects and am more concerned than before. I had not anticipated the tech industry’s embrace of Trump (though I should have), or how quickly it would generate ROI in the form of a complete abdication of regulation of AI, Crypto, hate speech on social media, etc. (On the contrary, the Trump family is rapidly cashing in.) And I still think that, oh, around half of America has no f---ing idea what AI is about to do to their jobs.
13. Jewish Stuff. This was worse than expected. The Gaza War went on even longer than expected, the intra-Jewish discourse is disgusting, and the antisemitism paranoia is almost as bad as antisemitism is. I was right but not pessimistic enough.
14. The Next Catastrophe. Hasn’t happened yet. Yet.
What did I leave off the list? Plenty.
Absurd manifestations of authoritarianism, from military parades to barbarian takeover of the Kennedy Center, overtly racist Homeland Security messaging to the demolition of the East Wing. I don’t think anyone believed, in October 2024, that there would really be no grownups in the room to counter Trump’s infantile impulses.
The shredding of America’s scientific and academic infrastructures. As much as the Right hates evolution, Covid science, vaccines, and wokeness, I didn’t think they’d actually cause the country to commit intellectual seppuku on this scale.
The right-wing media takeover, first at CBS and now potentially at CNN/Time Warner.
The stratospheric level of the Trump family’s corruption and kleptocracy.
The extent of the war on trans people. This is happening despite its failure to swing any elections; it’s not even a political winner anymore. It seems to be purely a paroxysm of hate and ignorance (and many of my centrist friends are in the ignorant camp).
RFK’s lethal know-nothingism has gone on far longer than I expected, with devastating consequences. I thought he’d be fired by now.
The attacks on healthcare in particular. Largely subsumed in #11 but still much more extreme than I had imagined.
The rapid decline in America’s status in the world; we are no longer seen as a reliable ally and are basically a rogue superpower. I really thought there’d be some capitalist grownups in the room, but there aren’t. Xi and Putin couldn’t have hoped for more.
Nihilism. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming weeks but it feels like the growth and prevalence of nihilism is rapidly becoming a national crisis.
I’ve taken a lot from this exercise — I encourage you to give it a try. If you journaled or otherwise recorded what you were most worried about a year ago, how much of it came to pass? And what happened that you never would have predicted?
For me, the point is not to evaluate whether things are worse or better than expected, but to notice that they diverged from expectations in ways that are interesting, revealing, and grounding. In a zone flooded with excrement, it’s almost a kind of raft.
If you haven’t watched the 60 Minutes piece on CECOT, it’s all over the internet — here’s one place to watch the whole thing. Relatedly, Jay Kuo did a great take on the Streisand Effect in these contexts: how trying to bury the CECOT story, and the Epstein story, has backfired.
I’ll be writing on the trans issue more next year; in the meantime, Important Context did an excellent summary of the recent anti-trans actions by Trump and RFK.
Thanks to all of my paying subscribers for enabling this enterprise to be sustainable. If you’ve been reading for a while but haven’t upgraded to paid yet, maybe you’ll consider doing so! In the meantime, have a happy new year, whatever that means for you!
Bravo. I think so much will turn on whether the elections in ‘26 and ‘28 can withstand the widespread R manipulation that you’ve written about so comprehensively . . .
I appreciate this reflection and always look forward to your insights. the elections in VA and NJ have given me the most hope that we can disrupt what’s happening before it’s too late