2024: Out of the Frying Pan by Geoff Carter

Artwork by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

New Year retrospectives are, for the most part, eminently predictable. There are the usual lists of notable storms and natural disasters, celebrity memorials, messy political scandals, blockbuster movies, and the newest eye-dazzling technologies. People like lists. They’re quick, easy to read, and distill even the most complicated issues into a simple sentence. Unfortunately, recapping what happened during 2023 is anything but simple—this year was an amalgam of horrible new lows, including a record number of mass shootings, determined attempts to instill draconian censorship in our schools, and heinous cruelties and atrocities in Israel and the Ukraine But 2023 was also a year of renewed determination to fix the climate, astonishing medical breakthroughs in the treatments of crippling diseases, and bold new gains in human rights.

They say history repeats. If that’s so, 2023 was like a recurring nightmare. There is yet another bitter and bloody war raging in the Middle East. The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to slog on, logging even more civilian casualties. The US Congress is bitterly divided and deadlocked on even the most basic tasks. The world is still suffering from record-breaking hurricanes and climate disruptions at an alarming rate. Mexico’s Pacific Coast suffered three devastating storms in a little over a two-week span. Mass shootings are continuing to rise in the U.S. So, Happy New Year.

It is also a year of dubious firsts. Donald Trump became the first United States ex-president to be indicted of a felony (ninety-one of them to exact). He is outpolling all other candidates for the 2025 Republican presidential nomination, the first time a candidate with felony indictments has done so. Of course, it’s also the first time a candidate with felony indictments has run for president. 2023 also marks the first time a political party expelled its own Speaker of the House and had some embarrassing difficulties in electing a new one. Firearm deaths have become the leading cause of fatalities for young people in America.

But not all 2023 landmarks were negative. For the first time ever, a film directed by a woman (Greta Gerwig’s Barbie) has grossed over a billion dollars and received rave reviews. Although abortion rights in the U.S. were compromised by the Dobbs Decision, reproductive rights activists are fighting back and have won major referendums in Kansas, Ohio, and other states. Studies also show that married American couples are now on equal earning levels and the gender gap in science is closing.

On the medical front, surgeons successfully performed a whole eye transplant, major breakthroughs were made in the battle against Alzheimer’s Disease, and malaria was eliminated in the country of Belize. Global child mortality rates seem to be at the lowest ever.

New energy technology also made headlines in 2023. The world’s largest solar farm, which will eliminate carbon emissions by 2.4 million tonnes was activated by the UAR. The first “green” container ship and fossil-fuel free airline flight occurred last year, and, for the first time, the US produced more electricity from renewable energy sources than coal-fired sources for the first time ever. It seems as if the world is finally—finally—starting to react to the problems of climate change.

Artificial Intelligence is being hailed as a great tool for science, industry, and the arts. It has also been criticized as an entity which will compromise academic standards and possibly put thousands of people out of work. A major sticking point in the Hollywood writers’ strike was the use of AI in the screenwriting process. The Actor’s Union complained of AI being used to acquire and use facial representations in films without compensation to the actors. And who knows how smart AI will get? Remember Skynet from The Terminator.

So much for 2023. What’s on the horizon?

The coming year is going to be monumental for the United States. We will be heading into a major election cycle next November in order to choose a president and a significant number of senators and representatives, along with a number of state legislators. The 2022 Dobbs Decision is looming large for Republicans seeking office. This decision overturning Roe-v-Wade has proved to be immensely unpopular to voters of all political stripes. Referendums in ultra-conservative Kansas and the less deep red state of Ohio have decisively supported a woman’s right to choose in those states. However, Republicans refuse to back down in their opposition to reproduction rights. Some support a nationwide ban on abortion. Other less zealous and more practical politicians have backed off this extreme position.

Donald Trump, despite his felony indictments, is the leading Republican candidate for president. His base does not seem to care that he promulgated the lie the 2020 election was stolen and then attempted, through various means, to overturn that election. They don’t care that he tried to coerce votes in Georgia or that he absconded with classified national secrets to his hideout in Mar-a-Lago. They are somehow blind to this, or are willing to ignore it, or—chillingly—approve of it. So, in this instance, 2023 was a year of tolerance—tolerance toward a would-be despot who has openly proclaimed he will be a dictator when he comes into office.

Intolerance (very much like the tolerance exemplified by Trump supporters) has permeated our educational systems during 2023. School boards across the country have been banning books in the classroom and school libraries. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has argued in an amicus brief that “public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message” and that public school libraries are not a “forum for free expression.”

Tango Makes Three, a children’s book about a same-sex penguin couple adopting a child, is one of the most widely banned books in the country. It is only of scores of texts dealing with issues of sexual identity and gender that have been banned. Besides other banned favorites like To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, and Catch-22, titles like The Bluest Eye, Blue, and other texts dealing with minorities have also been banned. This comes on the heels of an Oklahoma law that “prohibits public schools from teaching concepts that would cause students to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of their race or gender.” (The Hill) So, the teaching of slavery, the Tulsa Massacre, manifest destiny, or historical novels Sounder or Killers of the Flower Moon would be prohibited. Our history would be, in every sense, whitewashed.

Some of these events occurred before 2023, but their repercussions are still being felt and will continue to resonate in the coming year, especially during the 2024 elections. Will we be a country willing to ban books, restrict reproductive rights, and turn our public libraries over to the government? Will we become a country willing to be led by a megalomaniacal self-proclaimed dictator who has been indicted of trying to overthrow an honest election?

We survived 2023, and I suppose the most pertinent question will be who are we and who will we be in 2024?