I materially agree with Steven Greenhut’s observation at Reason.com that we have entered a period of kakistocracy:

Being a writer, I’m fairly confident in the extent of my vocabulary. I was nevertheless surprised to learn a new word in 2024—and to realize that, according to more than a few pundits, it defined the entire year. The herd of political onlookers might actually be onto something.

The word is so arcane my Word document flags it as a misspelling. Whereas an “idiocracy” is a society governed by morons, a “kakistocracy” is one “governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.” In this case, our nation’s overlords aren’t dummies, but might be defined by cunning, self-interest, venality, delusion, vanity or mental decline.

They most definitely do not adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s observation that, “Power is not alluring to pure minds.” By contrast, a kakistocracy is a government run by impure folks who crave little more than power. Such a system more closely resembles Benjamin Franklin’s observation: “In rivers and bad governments the lightest things swim at top.”

Not only that but things are likely to remain that way unless we identify the reasons why this has happened.

My first claim would be that we have been relentlessly pushing towards kakistocracy for a very long time. Open media have just made it more obvious.

My second claim is that the farther the government is from ordinary citizens and the less constrained by law, the will of the people, and even right and wrong the worse things will become.

My third claim is that partisanship allows us to ignore the obvious faults of our fellow partisans.

My last claim is that the more money and power there is in government the worse things will become.

Beyond that I have few ideas of how to make things better.

I found this post at Politico, listing some “black swan” events that might happen next, interesting:

So we asked an array of thinkers — futurists, scientists, foreign policy analysts and others — to lay out some of the possible “Black Swan” events that could await us in the new year: What are the unpredictable, unlikely episodes that aren’t yet on the radar but would completely upend American life as we know it?

Our experts floated all sorts of catastrophes, from the threat of AI to deadly epidemics, but they also raised the notion of progress, including in some surprising global hotspots.

The following scenarios may or may not take place in 2025, but they shouldn’t immediately be dismissed. When we undertook this exercise last year, a number of predictions proved eerily prescient.

Among the “non-predictions” in the list are:

• The Largest Cyberattack in History
• A Secret Deal to Stop Iran From Developing Nuclear Weapons
• Secessionists Are on the March
• A Trump and Xi Alliance Will Emerge
• A Two-State Solution

Some on the list are more likely than others. Some are frighteningly likely. Some appear to be happening already.

I mentioned before that my favorite Christmas present this year was some ornaments my wife had made from ribbons that Kara won. They are pictured above. A good use for those ribbons, don’t you think?

I honestly don’t know what to make of the two incidents on New Years Day, one in New Orleans and the other in Las Vegas.

As of this writing the New Orleans incident in which a driver driving a rented truck deliberately mowed down people celebrating in Bourbon Street appears to be a case of radicalization. The Las Vegas incident in which a guy apparently killed himself in a rented Tesla truck before the fireworks and explosives he’d filled its bed with exploded is even more baffling.

So, what’s going on?

Update

My interpretation of President-Elect Trump’s comments trying to tie the incident to illegal immigration is that it’s an instance of Maslow’s Hammer (when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail). Illegal immigration is his issue so he relates everything to it.

Here are the things that the team at Vox.com thinks are likely to happen (> 50% probability) in 2025:

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s preliminary estimates of US car crash deaths for 2024 will be lower than 40,000 (70 percent)
• Benjamin Netanyahu is still Israel’s PM at the end of November 2025 (75 percent)
• There will be a ceasefire in Ukraine (75 percent)
• EVs will make up more than 10 percent of new car sales in the US by the end of Q3 2025 (65 percent)
• Bitcoin’s price will at some point in 2025 breach $200,000 (70 percent)
• Elon Musk is still the richest person in the world (55 percent)
• Antibiotic sales for use in livestock production will have increased by at least 0.5 percent in 2024 (55 percent)
• Bird flu results in the deaths of at least 30 million farmed birds by the end of 2025 (60 percent)
• California’s animal agriculture law Proposition 12 will not be overturned by Congress (65 percent)
• At least one additional state bans lab-grown meat in 2025 (80 percent)
• Max Verstappen wins the Formula 1 World Drivers’ Championship (60 percent)
• Charli XCX wins a Grammy for Brat (90 percent)

while here are Karl Rove’s predictions for 2025 from the Wall Street Journal:

Congress approves two reconciliation packages, one for immigration and another to extend Mr. Trump’s tax cuts. Immigration passes first. Tax cuts take time. Mr. Trump doesn’t get more than one of his promised new tax cuts on tips, overtime pay and Social Security.

Mr. Trump’s deportation of violent criminal aliens will be popular, though not easy as progressive state and local governments throw up roadblocks. Attempting to deport illegal immigrants who have otherwise kept their noses clean will be highly unpopular. The courts sustain birthright citizenship.

At least one of the incoming president’s controversial nominees—Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Kash Patel—doesn’t make it. Speaker Mike Johnson is re-elected, though it’s ugly. Twenty-five or more House Republicans oppose raising the debt ceiling, forcing Mr. Trump and GOP congressional leaders to negotiate with Democrats this spring.

While a useful exercise, the Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Department of Government Efficiency doesn’t come up with anything close to $2 trillion in spending cuts. The three amigos—Don, Elon and Vivek—fall out.

There’s a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. The GOP wins either the Wisconsin or Pennsylvania supreme court contest this spring, but not both.

Mr. Trump presides over a groundbreaking Israel-Saudi Arabia peace deal. It isn’t enough to save Mr. Netanyahu, whose unstable coalition government finally collapses. There’s no immediate cease-fire in Ukraine as Vladimir Putin stalls for time. Friedrich Merz becomes Germany’s next chancellor. Canadian Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The president-elect’s imperial dreams aren’t realized: Canada doesn’t become a state, Denmark won’t sell Greenland and Panama declines to return the canal.

Inflation slows further. U.S. economic growth is less than 2024’s forecast 2.7%. The S&P rises less than a third of what it did the year before. Rather than levying tariffs, Mr. Trump uses them mostly rhetorically to get concessions on trade, immigration and defense spending. Tariffs made up 1.57% of federal revenue in fiscal 2024; they won’t be more than 2.5% in 2025.

Artificial intelligence poses risks, but in 2025 we’ll see how it will transform medicine. NASA launches a space observatory that creates a comprehensive map of the universe.

Josh Allen is NFL MVP, Jayden Daniels wins Offensive Rookie of the Year, Aaron Rodgers doesn’t return to the Jets, and the Chiefs fail to win their third consecutive Super Bowl. “Wicked” is best picture, Ralph Fiennes best actor, and Denzel Washington best supporting actor.

If I find any other interesting predictions I’ll update this post with them.

I found it gratifying that strategist and international relations thinker Edward Luttwak echoed the views I articulated earlier in his piece at UnHerd:

The foreign busybodies in the State Department, Foreign Office and the French foreign ministry, who are already now pressing for the reconstruction of a unitary Syrian state, should reflect on the country’s history. Syria was never meant to function as a unitary state. Nor under Sunni Arab majority rule, as it is likely to now.

concluding:

Perhaps the Syrians are best left alone to rebuild their state as they see fit. But if benevolent Western officials do intervene, they should not automatically favour a unitary and centralised state — a preference unfortunately shared even by American officials who come from a federal state. A confederal Syria would be a much better alternative.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Syria as it was constructed by the French in the aftermath of World War I ceases to exist. There are signs that the Druze of the Golan Heights would actually prefer to become part of Israel while I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kurds in Syria’s north decided that the fall of Assad’s regime presented a wonderful opportunity to form their own state, a move that the Turks are already moving to prevent.

How the Alawites on the coast will react to developments is anybody’s guess. Might they seek to join with Lebanon? That would leave the Sunni Arab population that is preponderant in the rest of historic Syria in a bad situation.

What I don’t expect is a liberal democratic Syria within its existing boundaries to take form peacefully.

We’ve had a restful New Years Day by the fireplace. That’s Ghillie relaxing in the armchair.

As is our custom we watched the Rose Parade on KTLA which is conveniently available streaming for free. It has the best coverage of the parade.

So far the best thing about 2025 is that it’s not 2024.

Best wishes to all for a happy and prosperous new year!

Update

We had Hoppin’ John for dinner tonight. No cornbread, though.

May he rest in peace. I think his post-presidency was the most distinguished of any president’s.

An enormous number of things going on these days remind me of the old wisecrack I’ve heard attributed to Lincoln (which I doubt). It’s about the guy on trial for murdering his parents who appeals for mercy on the grounds that he’s an orphan. Right now that’s a pretty good description of bringing people into the country on H1-B visas because there aren’t enough engineers. To produce enough engineers here in the U. S. there needs to be a career path for engineers in the U. S. That has been narrowing year by year for decades. For EEs there hasn’t been much of a career path for 40 years—since companies like Zenith and Motorola laid off all of their senior engineers in favor of engineers in Japan, South Korea, and now India.

I’m actually in favor of expanding the number of H1-B visas issued but I’m also in favor of strict enforcement and severe punishments for companies that break the rules and hiring foreign workers at wages less than the prevailing wage is against the rules. It’s something that companies like Microsoft and Facebook have been doing for years.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is that things are unfolding much as I have predicted. I’m starting to see demands for a complete suspension of immigration. I think that would be a mistake but it was predictable after our failure to control our southern border. I doubt that President Trump will have the votes to impose something as restrictive as the Immigration Act of 1924.