It Was a Bad Year For Everything On the Kimmel List

 

It was Jimmy Kimmel who nailed it, on the air, on the night after the ’24 election:

It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go. For healthcare, for our climate, for scientists, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO and democracy and decency. It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him and guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too, you just don’t realize it yet.

As I wrote that day — the first time I used this quote — Kimmel has thoughtfully provided us with a scorecard for tracking the depraved actions of the depraved junta now trying, cruelly but ineptly, to rule us.

Let’s call it the Kimmel List, shall we? Each item on it rates its own primal scream. Going down the list, I found myself with plenty to scream about, so I started free-associating. I set out to write quick takes about each item, treating each as its own crisis.

I didn’t cover the whole list — it’s too exhausting — but I expect to return to it going forward.

So yes, Jimmy, it was a terrible night. But I’m sure you’ll agree that the terrible night has grown into a terrible year for all of the following, and then some:

Women

The domination and subjugation of women, that tired fantasy of the toxic male, has never been closer to reality, at least not in this country. Women are in retreat on many fronts at once — abortion, contraception, pregnancy, childcare, healthcare, education. That said, male supremacy is far from a done deal, and the blowback against it has been fierce. As long as blue states maintain the sanity that red states have so stupidly jettisoned, these things will at least remain available.

Still, there is something demoralizing about having to fight battles we thought were won long ago. The field has always been tilted away from women, something even well-meaning men have never fully appreciated. So it’s hard to watch as their lives get worse, for no apparent reason.

Children

As usual, children are the big victims here. There are few items on this list that don’t, directly or indirectly, affect children. Beyond the many millions of American kids who rely on government help to survive — some through their parents, some through their schools, some through federal programs like SNAP — children are also victims of the deliberate undermining of our school system.

They are now learning at an appallingly low level, which isn’t made better by banning books, demonizing teachers, or gutting the Department of Education. They can also look forward to classrooms filled with unvaccinated classmates, and to friends dying of measles.

And yet, American children have it easy compared to those in parts of Africa and Asia, specifically those children who were essentially left to die when Elon Musk cut off food and medical supplies from USAID. All the good will and soft power that was built up over so many decades was gone in a flash. We may never get it back, and children will continue dying in appalling numbers.

Immigrants

Surely, immigrants would have headed this list had Kimmel but known what was truly in store. Kudos to 60 Minutes — a tarnished brand, of late — for standing up to the new fascist boss of CBS, Bari Weiss, after she spiked their stomach-churning story about the CECOT prison in El Salvador.

The segment is now widely, but only tentatively available (try here). Watching it is, I think, something of a civic duty. It tells a story we all need to remember, especially as CBS does all it can to shut down the viral viewership they know got away from them. The net effect of Weiss’s idiocy was to raise the segment’s visibility, to the point where it will likely become the most watched piece in the history of the show. Millions of people who never watch 60 Minutes are watching it, and they can’t help but be horrified.

It’s a fitting finale to a year that was harder on immigrants than anyone else. From the ICE roundups to the mass deportations, from the macho cosplay of Kristi Noem to the mustache-twirling villainy of Stephen Miller, this country is putting immigrants through pure hell, for no reason whatsoever. This is a national shame, and we must bear witness. As it is, we will never live it down.

Healthcare

Look no further than next week, when tens of millions of families get their health insurance bills and see what a difference a government subsidy makes. Barring a highly unlikely injection of human decency into House and Senate Republicans, this will be a major humanitarian crisis, a completely preventable calamity that will deeply affect everyone, even those lucky enough to still have health insurance when the dust clears.

The ripple effects will wreak havoc on hospitals, doctors, and every corner of the healthcare system, guaranteeing that we will all be paying more and getting less for the foreseeable future. And, thanks to RFK Jr’s undermining of medical research and vaccination policies, we’ll all be far more likely to die of some exotic disease.

Climate

The climate continued catching up to us, aided and abetted by the junta’s blind obedience to the gospel of fossil fuels. Why Republicans and oil companies are hell-bent on making their planet uninhabitable is beyond me. Don’t they live here too? But it’s not just that they refuse to accept scientific reality, it’s that they’re deliberately making things worse, rolling back any progress that’s been made to date.

Beyond the suicidal nature of such behavior, it means that we, as a country, are basically ceding the entire field of renewable energy to China and, to a lesser extent, Europe. One day — and it’s not far off — most of the world’s energy will come from renewable resources, and the production of that energy will be a key economic driver for countries that don’t get in their own way — or shoot themselves in the foot. We’re supposed to be leading this charge. Instead, we’re missing it.

NATO

It’s hard to fathom how 80 years of carefully nurtured global alliances could come crashing down in less than a year, but of all the Trumpian atrocities on the Kimmel List, this will probably be the hardest to walk back. The attitude of our NATO allies was seen clearly at last month’s Halifax International Security Forum, an annual gathering of the world’s security and defense types, which had, for the first time, no official American presence. Our government — which until this year was the very cornerstone of global cooperation — declined to participate.

That said, there were plenty of Americans in attendance, including Democratic congresspeople, and they got an earful from some very pissed-off allies. The net takeaway of the conference is bluntly summed up in the words of one non-American senior officer: “We will never fucking trust you again.”

Think about that. From now on, our most important friends in the world will have no choice but to consider us a security risk. They’ll think at least twice before sharing with us any intelligence, technical secrets, or strategic thinking, and they’ll surely withhold any good stuff they acquire. They have to assume that anything they say to Tulsi Gabbard or Pete Hegseth or, indeed, Donald Trump will be heard in Moscow or Beijing or Pyongyang. The consequences of this heinous betrayal of our allies are not measurable at this time, but we can be sure they’ll be massive, and that they’ll serve us right.

Everyone who voted for Trump

In the runup to the 2020 election, I was driving through the farmlands of Michigan’s Thumb region, past miles and miles of Trump-Vance signs. Some of them read “I’m Voting for a Convicted Felon,” like it was something to be proud of. Seeing so much gullibility on such vivid display was something of a dope-slap for me, but at the time I naively assumed those farmers were backing a loser.

I was wrong, obviously. Trump won, but it’s not exactly going as planned. Now every farmer is facing the calamitous confluence of whipsawing tariffs, vanishing markets, and migrant workers too scared to come to work. FAFO.

As scorecards go, the Kimmel List is worth keeping, and worth consulting periodically. It includes things I didn’t get to — scientists, justice, free speech, poor people, the middle class, seniors, Ukraine, democracy. It also leaves out a bunch of things, including veterans, LGBTQ, small business, rule of law.

But it’s not Jimmy’s fault that on the day after the election, he couldn’t imagine everything that might go wrong. After all, even then the list was endless.

What I haven’t touched on here is the pushback, which has been impressive, if not conclusive. Some sort of tide seems to be turning, though what that means and how it plays out is not yet known. That said, anything that makes a dent in this list is most welcome.