By Ande Jacobson

I used to write a holiday letter each year to share with friends, mostly those who were far away. At first I sent them in holiday cards via the mail, but over time I started writing them as emails, and later as articles on my website. They detailed my big events through the year. Sometimes they noted my personal accomplishments. Other times they covered my struggles. Over time though, I stopped writing them. Instead, I started writing an end of year essay thinking about what had happened over the year in broader terms. My individual exploits no longer seemed all that important in the grand scheme of things, either to me or to those I cared about.

This year while I’ve certainly had some personal struggles (haven’t we all), the bigger picture again overshadows anything in my personal life. I have friends and family who have done some big things, but even their accomplishments pale in comparison to the precipice on which we stand. As a nation and a world, I never imagined we would be where we are today as 2024 draws to a close.

In numerous previous years, I’d be focused on the arts at this of year. Before the pandemic, I participated in San Jose’s Saxophone Christmas each year where saxophone players came from far and wide to join together for a joyous holiday music spectacular on the third Saturday of December. The 30th Annual San Jose SaxMas happened on 21 December 2024 right on schedule, and from all accounts it was the biggest turnout yet – something like 242 saxes of all shapes and sizes played by players of all shapes and sizes celebrating the music of the season. Alas, I was unable to attend. 2019 was very likely my final SaxMas, but I always look forward to enjoying a video of the event. It’s something very special and festive, and it was a lot of fun to play in years past.

Some years I looked forward to the incoming year. Other years I really didn’t want to end because there was so much more that I wanted to enjoy. This year is different than most in my lifetime, and it’s one that although it’s been an exceedingly difficult year in many ways, I don’t want it to end not because I want things to continue as they are this year, but because I fear the future that has been building.

In previous years, I wasn’t generally afraid that democracy could potentially end in the U.S. There were always disagreements and negotiations, but the foundations and institutions of our democracy were time tested and strong. I might not have always agreed with some of the decisions that were made, but overall, progress toward the ideal where everyone was equal before the law was positive. We have never reached that ideal, but we kept making strides toward it. As this year draws to a close, while I think we can continue that progress, we’ll need to work much harder to do so, and we’ll have to make a lot of repairs along the way.

I don’t like that politics has intruded on every aspect of my daily life, but it’s too important to ignore what’s happening. I yearn for the days when politics was generally boring and not front and center in my thoughts outside of specific issues, or during elections. After what’s happened over the last decade, and in particular this year, we can no longer assume that democracy will endure without a lot of work on our part. Democracy is a participation sport, and we all need to be informed and engaged. With today’s technological advancements, that’s both easier and more difficult. It’s easier to be engaged because limitless information is available at our fingertips. It’s much more difficult because that ease of information flow allows the dissemination of disinformation on a scale never before seen. The onus is on the information consumer to verify the information they consume. That takes a certain amount of will and skill as Teri Kanefield discusses in her book, A Firehose of Falsehood.

We had an election this year, possibly the most consequential election in my lifetime – though we seem to be saying that every election recently. While the future is not yet written, I, like many of my friends and family, are concerned about our future as a country. The election itself was far from normal.

I watched in horror through the campaign and election process as the country moved in slow motion toward the greatest challenge to our democracy since the Civil War as we close out 2024 and move toward a changing of the guard. We are moving from the most positively consequential presidency of my lifetime to one filled with uncertainty and chaos.

Unlike in 2021, there will be a peaceful transition of power this time. Donald J. Trump won the election. He didn’t win an arithmetic majority of the popular vote, but he did win a plurality garnering the most votes of any single candidate. The interesting aspect of this though is that more people voted for somebody other than Trump than for him. They just didn’t all vote for the same somebody, so he won. And he won a decisive tally of electors in the Electoral College. Those electoral votes are in the process of being certified by the states at this point, and they will be counted by Congress on 6 January 2025, with a giant caveat.

The first thing a new House of Representatives has to do every two years before it can conduct any business, including certifying the electoral count after a presidential election, is elect a new House speaker. Since the election, Speaker Mike Johnson has run afoul of the extremists in his party, and the Republican House members are suggesting they do not want Johnson to continue as speaker. The problem is that they don’t have a replacement who can yet garner the votes necessary to become the new speaker.

In 2023 when the GOP regained control of the House, it took the better part of a week and 15 ballots with numerous concessions to secure a new speaker, one that the GOP threw out less than a year later. In 2025, they will have three days to mess around with speaker ballots before they must certify the presidential vote, so they won’t have a lot of time to waste. It’ll be fascinating to see what happens if they cannot agree on a speaker before 6 January 2025. The GOP will have a very slim majority in the House when they resume in 2025, even narrower than it is now, and the Democrats are not motivated to help them this time around.

More than the House chaos though, there is an even more disturbing development that has been playing out since the election. Ever since the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United decision equating money with speech such that unlimited funds can be funneled into PACs that affect elections, some ultra-wealthy individuals have exerted undue influence over our elected officials. This time, it appears that the richest man in the world, an immigrant who holds dangerous anti-immigrant views, has effectively bought the presidency and has clear influence over the GOP members of Congress. This came to a head over must-pass legislation to avoid a government shutdown right before the holidays. It is currently unclear who is in control of the incoming administration, the actual president-elect, or the unelected billionaire who funneled over $277 million to back him. This billionaire is ineligible to be president given he is a naturalized American citizen who was born in South Africa, and yet he is demanding actions from Congress as though he was elected to the presidency. This is not normal, and it’s terrifying to watch happen.

None of us know for sure what 2025 will bring, and while we can certainly hope for the best, we need to take our responsibilities as citizens seriously. As historian Heather Cox Richardson has said in many of her Letters from an American, we cannot give Congress permission to not do its job. We need to contact our federal and state elected officials and remind them that they work for us and have sworn an oath to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution, not the whims of some unelected billionaire looking to profit off of our nation’s division and dysfunction.

There’s a lot to digest during a time when we’d prefer to be engaged in visiting family and friends over colorful celebrations to end a year. We still have our voices for now. We need to use them wisely to ensure that we continue to have the privilege to do so in the future.