Happy New Year!
Here's what I can tell about 2025 (with 99.9% certainty).
In plazas and parks and restaurants, and homes across the globe, people gathered to commemorate the end of 2024 and welcome the New Year.
Bold swimmers plunged into a frigid lake in Switzerland, joggers in Poland took one last whimsical run of the year and fireworks crackled in cities large and small.
The celebrations heralded the end of a tumultuous year during which more than half of the world’s population went to the polls, shaping the future of democracies in more than 30 countries. In Syria, a revolution overthrew a brutal, decades-long dictatorship, as wars widened in the Middle East and ground on in Ukraine and Sudan. The year was almost certainly the hottest on record, beating the high set in 2023.
There was triumph, failure and shimmering pageantry at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. And on April 8, millions looked skyward, gazing in awe as a total solar eclipse bathed parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada in darkness (World Welcomes 2025).
I celebrated New Year’s with some good friends and family in Portugal, and now I am writing from Munich, Germany. Along our day-long journey from Portugal through Madrid, we watched as people reacted to each other with wider smiles, more eye contact, and an overall sense that a positive, collective event had passed with most taking part in some way or another. That’s what the celebrations for the onset of the new year mean for me. They are a reminder that we are all still here, on this earth, and for a few minutes, when it is our turn to watch balls drop, bells peel, and fireworks explode across the sky, we become geographically aligned with our fellow time zone travelers.
On January 1st, though, having made it past the celebrations and one morning officially into the new year, many people regard each other with a forced sense of optimism. Maybe this year will be the year that “it” happens — most of us have our own personal “its” that if they did happen, then the year would truly be a memorable one. I could feel that freedom from last year’s disappointments in the faces of people arriving from all over the world to Madrid — we had a layover of 5 hours there, and I sat, watched, and listened. Many could feel my eyes strolling about, and instead of being closed off, they offered up smiles and the occasion” Happy New Year” in an assortment of languages.
After a while, I grew tired of greeting people and worn out by my strolls in the longest airport terminal in the world, which is 1.2 miles from one end to the other (I did five laps). I closed my eyes and dozed off. I slept the kind of sleep where you are still fully cognizant of what is happening around you. I began to drive my dreams in the direction I wanted them. I decided to make some predictions for the year.
2025 will be the hottest year on human record. Each month will be drier — or wetter — and warmer than every month before it since “man began keeping records.” COP 30, to convene in Brazil in November, will accomplish absolutely nothing but make a lot of not-so-smart people feel good and write ridiculous articles about FOMO because they couldn’t make it. Box checked, humanity will pull one year closer to widespread catastrophe.
In 2025, America will stop pussyfooting around and stride confidently and with widespread support toward full-blown fascism. The corporate media will fall in line and accept Trump’s demands that it not be critical of his administration or the chaos caused by its failures. The Trump justice department will persecute non-corporate media like bloggers, podcasters, and others, and 2025 will see the first reporter or essayist go to jail for writing critically about Trump.
The war in Ukraine in 2025 will slowly grind to a halt, not because Russia has grown tired but because Ukraine has been cut off from U.S. support. The Trump administration will force Ukraine to accept a settlement where the entirety of Eastern Ukraine, including regions Russia seized after the start of the war, will be recognized by the United States as the rightful territory of the Russian Federation. Vladimir Zelensky was ousted from the presidency after he agreed to a settlement that left many Ukrainians wondering why they had suffered for so long and if it would always end in surrender.
In 2025, the Yankees will win the World Series against the Mets; the Jets will lose 10 games, and Rutgers football will win 10.
In 2025, Donald Trump will turn the United States again into a laughingstock of the world, and the NATO alliance will begin meeting and training without the United States in an acceptance that the only way to save the coalition is to continue without full support from the U.S.
The bromance between Trump and Musk will have more starts and stops than J Lo and Ben Affleck’s, but finally, Musk will turn on Trump and use his Twitter platform, which will lose 50 percent of its daily users, to bash Trump’s administration and MAGA.
The United States will see the construction of the first internment camps since World War II when Japanese Americans were rounded up and put behind barbed wire in California. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants will be deported.
Tens of thousands of federal employees will have to swear their allegiance as the first loyalty oath in our nation’s history will be introduced. In a mass “swearing in,” thousands will be ordered to appear on the Washington Mall on July 4th for a barbecue and a swearing-in.
Vladimir Putin will survive the year pretty much the way he ended it. Transgender women will be banned from playing in female sports. Book burnings will start up in some deep red states — Arkansas will choose to burn their books on Trump’s birthday.
After a half hour of this thought-smorgasbord whirling around in my head, I woke up and took another lap around the Madrid Airport. People were smiling and nodding.
Happy New Year!