It was the year of the Barbie movie grossing over $600 million in U.S. sales beside Oppenheimer, the most tedious three hours of movie excess even considered a “classic.”

2023 was also the first time an ex-president was indicted, not once, but four times. Donald Trump, currently the leading Republican candidate for president in 2024, stayed on the front page throughout the year.

More headlines had “Hunter Biden” in them than any other topic mentioned by Republicans.

It was the year of strikes with Hollywood writers and actors and the United Auto Workers, all faring well in the outcomes of their battles for wages and benefits.

2023 saw a sitting U.S. Democratic senator, Bob Menendez, of New Jersey, indicted after gold bars were discovered in his family home. Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos, of New York, was indicted and booted from Congress for his, um, inventive lies about all things spoken.

Ozempic and Wegovy made more Americans thinner than every diet combined and without dieting. Semaglutides may become the golden fleece of weight loss, to be eventually sold over the counter to anyone who over-ate last night.

In polling in 2023, Gallup named China the most significant enemy of the U.S.; reported that trust in the mass media fell to an all-time low of 23 percent; trust in the Supreme Court fell to an all-time low of 49 percent; a plurality of young Americans report they are Independents, not Republicans or Democrats; and young adults are drinking fewer alcoholic beverages that their predecessors.

Taylor Swift was Time magazine’s most influential person of the year in 2023 and her concert tour brought in a whopping $1 billion in 2023, setting an all-time record.

The House of Representatives managed to accomplish absolutely nothing while hiring and firing Keven McCarthy as speaker and instituting an impeachment inquiry on President Joe Biden because they had no other work in progress. Budget demands and border legislation took a back seat to the trivia of who got to force a Biden impeachment first (see Lauren Boebert vs. Marjorie Taylor Greene).

The stock market bubbled up at the end of the year to enrich all investors and demonstrate that valuations mean less than perceptions when determining prices.

The Supreme Court gutted affirmative action, concluding that race in practice is irrelevant while equality in theory holds precedence.

AI hit the mainstream with all its potential in medicine and science, and all its risk to politics and truth. What happens next with AI seems unknowable as Congress seems unable to grasp its nature and potential for good or evil.

And East Palestine, Ohio became the poster child for all the unfulfilled promises that our major carriers of all things dangerous were being monitored for human safety. The rules and regulations were instead designed to protect the big business carriers with laws designed to look like regulations while serving as profit protectors.

Books were attacked again in 2023, abortion remained denied and life-threatening for many American women across the nation, and guns remained protected while our children remained at risk of gun deaths in schools across America.

Republicans, in 2023, continued to fight against the planet, the environment, and the climate in their endless denial of science and fact.

All things considered, 2023 had few memorable moments and offers a level of concern for 2024 on so many fronts.

Let us all remember that we are in this together in America and we can still accomplish great things…together.

Happy 2024!