The best thing you can say about 2021 is that it will soon be over. A year that started with an insurrection at the Capitol is ending with more than eight hundred thousand Americans dead in the COVID pandemic, as a contagious new variant, Omicron, produces the biggest wave of cases yet. Inflation is the highest it has been in decades. The twenty-year U.S. war in Afghanistan concluded with an embarrassing and botched American retreat. The Republican Party, rather than rejecting the defeated ex-President, has redoubled its commitment to Trump and Trumpism, purged dissenters, and embraced outright denialism, whether of vaccines or election results. Who’d have thought that 2020 would ever look good by comparison?
New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
Joe Biden, taking office amid multiple crises, was never going to have it easy. He campaigned on the…
