A Really Rough Year

Whatever else may be said or sayable about our troubled time, 2025 has certainly been a really rough year. To paraphrase a famous 1992 speech by Queen Elizabeth II, 2025 "is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure." 

That said, for me personally, 2025 has nonetheless had some very happy high points - in particular, the celebration of my 30th ordination anniversary in the affirming and fulfilling setting of family, friends, and religious community. This year also saw the surprising, but so very satisfying election of an American Augustinian as Pope Leo XIV. His rootedness in religious community (one so dear to me from my own upbringing and early education), his missionary experience in Peru, and his inspired choice of name all invite enthusiasm and hope for the Church and evoke echoes of Servant of God Isaac Hecker's hope in "the dawning light of an approaching, brighter, more glorious future for God's Holy Church."

And, at my age, any year lived well without serious illness is a good year in at least that limited personal sense! For all of that I am grateful.

But, beyond such admittedly positive personal perspectives, 2025 has still been a really rough year for the world in general, a grim year for far too many people in particular. I think of people increasingly alienated from one another by political and cultural differences in our troubled and conflicted society, some struggling to buy groceries or pay a medical bill or, even worse, worried about being targeted for violent harassment and the dangers of deportation. It has been a year of unprecedentedly arrogant political overreach and of corresponding cowardice on the part of cultural elites. Abroad, it has been a year of continued warfare and war's related civilian suffering. And that most ancient and persistent of the world's hatreds - antisemitism - has dramatically increased on both the political left and the political right.

For much of this year, a feeling of helpless passivity has been the main response to much of this. Only as the year limped to its end - in the wake, for example, of the November off-year-elections - has there been any perceptible change of mood. Even so, much irreversible damage. has been done. I think, for example, of the catastrophic consequences of the loss of USAID, which expended less than 1% of the U.S. Budget, but which was a world class life saver. I think too of all the children who may get measles - or worse - thanks to changes in vaccine policies.

There are several lenses through which one can consider the calamities of 2025. One which has acquired considerable popularity in the discourse, thanks to its successful use as an issue in the off-year elections, is affordability. In a general sense, that refers to the obvious fact that flourishing human and social life require people to earn enough to live adequately - to enjoy reasonable safety and security, to have suitable jobs that preferably provide benefits and some mobility, to be able to educate their children to live as well or better, etc. Meanwhile, the interests of the ruling oligarchy have diverged farther and farther from those of the mass of the population, with the latter increasingly treated as an unwelcome and increasingly redundant burden interfering with the oligarchy's profits. (The rise of AI may now realize the oligarchic ideal of eliminating any need to pay human workers! As Karl Marx observed back in 1856, "The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want.")

Another complementary lens through which to interpret our present distress is the retreat from pluralistic, constitutional order and rule of law into authoritarianism. About this, we have a lonh legacy of reflection from classical philosophy, which we know was somewhat preoccupied with the problem of the decline of democracy into despotism. In Book VIII of the Republic, Plato famously described the deterioration of his ideal city into the corrupt forms of oligarchy and democracy. The latter leads to despotism when the people support a demagogue. For anyone who ever doubted the abiding relevance of ancient political philosophy, both Plato and Aristotle had much to say that remains relevant to our contemporary democratic decline. So, of course, do more modern thinkers, like Alexis de Tocqueville who lived through French democratic decline into despotism under Napoleon III.

Looking beyond our borders, the lens of international relations offers a similarly depressing take on recent events. It is increasingly evident that the relatively stable post-World War II international order, that was largely guaranteed by a combination of overwhelming American power and moderately benign American interests is quickly coming to an end, as the world reverts to a previously common international order of competing spheres of interest. Thus, for  example, before its post-war internationalism, the U.S. seemed largely animated by the Monroe Doctrine, according to which whatever other empires did in their respective spheres of interest generally was not seen as a threat to American interests or values as long as other empires recognized the western hemisphere as the American empire's exclusive sphere of interest. Meanwhile, the damage done to the network of alliances that has managed the world these past 80 years has been perhaps irrevocable. All the while, much of the world (including Europe) is accordingly reverting to what was in the past the normal condition of war or threat of war.

Meanwhile back at home, the fragile network laboriously built up over generations of a pluralistic, increasingly open society has been challenged and has demonstrably frayed, as the always present nativist xenophobic streak in American culture has loudly and dangerously reasserted itself. For many immigrants and asylum seekers, the result has been direct personal tragedy. For many groups, it has been a collective trauma. For the nation as a whole, irreparable damage has been done to the institutions and relationships that have held our society together and have contributed so much to its peace and prosperity.

So, whatever else may be said, 2025 has been a very grim year, a really rough year for our country and our world.