Happy New Year 2024

Farewell 2023. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass as you hit the bricks.

Hit the bricks, 2023. And don’t come back.

What? Were you expecting something inspirational?

I want to thank my pal Janet Burroff for supplying the New Year’s artwork. I have featured Jan’s work every New Year’s Day since 2017. It became our annual tradition at my old website PatriotRetort.com, and I am delighted to continue it here on Substack.

I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed 2023. It was the year I lost my beautiful mother, Betty, and I’m still not over that particular punch in the gut.

Mostly, however, 2023 was just plain dumb. Dumb people. Dumb “controversies.” Dumb politics. Just a whole lotta dumb crammed into 365 days.

The Democrats and the media spent the entire year attempting to “save democracy” by trying to drag over the finish line the one Republican presidential candidate they think is a “grave threat to democracy.”

Elon Musk made the mistake of monetizing moronic takes on Twitter, thereby increasing the volume of truly insane and ignorant tweets from “influencers” hoping to cash in.

The Republicans retook the House by the skin of their teeth and then proceeded to spend the year making a hash of it.

The war that launched a million 🇺🇦 emojis faded into the background as most of the Americans who jumped aboard the 🇺🇦 train got bored with the ride.

Americans in 2023 had the attention span of a gnat. All the rah-rah cheerleading after the Russian invasion quickly lost its luster when the 🇺🇦-sporting Americans realized that ground wars take longer in real life than in the movies.

It probably didn’t help that Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive sputtered out like a wet fart.

It’s Zelensky’s dumb luck that Ukraine’s fate rests on a country whose people get easily distracted every time some new shiny thing catches their eye.

How could Volodymyr Zelensky hold America’s attention when there was a new Trump indictment every five weeks? Americans forgot all about Ukraine the day Trump’s mug shot was released.

It’s Zelensky’s dumber luck that Ukraine’s Great White Hope is an octogenarian president whose foreign policy “expertise” in 2023 resulted in numerous attacks on US service members in Iraq and Syria, missiles fired at US Navy ships in the Red Sea, a record invasion at the southern border, and a Chinese spy balloon casually traversing the country unmolested.

On the plus side, at least Biden was able to convince the Russians to release the lesbian basketball player in exchange for their arms dealer.

Zelensky is probably even happier to see 2023 end than I am.

That isn’t to say 2023 was entirely awful.

It was the year Republican governors landed on the perfect way to get the rest of the country to give a damn about the invasion of illegals Biden unleashed when he took office.

Thanks to governors DeSantis and Abbott, Democrat-run cities are getting a taste of what border cities have been experiencing for years, and boy, do they hate it. Suddenly Democrat mayors from sanctuary cities are echoing the anti-illegal immigration rhetoric of Pat Buchanan.

Unfortunately, since they’re Democrats, they appear to be learning the wrong lesson from it. Rather than demanding that the Biden administration stop the border invasion, they’re demanding more federal funds, because of course they are.

I’m not making any predictions for 2024, partly because I’m too cynical to make hopeful, inspiring predictions.

At the same time, there are things I hope for in the new year.

I hope Republican primary voters value Competence and Victory more than Pity and Vengeance when they go to the polls to vote.

I also hope the knobheads renting the house next door to me move out so I can once again sleep through the night without being rattled awake by overly-loud rap music and drunken shouting.

On the upside, I am heading into 2024 with far fewer Lupus symptoms thanks to the miracle drug my rheumatologist put me on last year. I’ll never say a bad word about the pharmaceutical industry. Thanks to their research and innovation, they developed a monoclonal treatment specifically for Lupus, and as a result, my life improved immeasurably in 2023. Sure, I still get the occasional Lupus flare, and my immune system is about as effective as spit on a forest fire, but overall, the flares have been less frequent and far less crippling.

Though, I could have done without the Mono in 2023. That was three months of misery.

Anyroad.

As we step through the door to 2024, remember two things: No politician is riding to our rescue, and there is more to life than the Internet.

If you can keep that in mind, you’ll be fine.

Thanks again, Janet!