My recommendation for 2025: No political chatter on vacation

If you don’t annoy or annoy your fellow Americans, you’re just boring us. So stop your barking for a few weeks and leave us alone.

Thomas L Knapp
| Opinion giver

It’s time for a “year in review” for most political columnists, so here’s my take on 2024, along with a recommendation for 2025.

Opinion: Zero out of ten, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re reading this in the year 2525 as you prepare to test out a time machine and decide which past year to visit, avoid this year.

On a societal level, I can’t think of any major positive events – political or cultural – that would be worth your energy. I can’t think of Armistice Day, The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, or moments with a man on the moon (perhaps the Bob Dylan biography “A Complete Unknown” will help – it comes out on Christmas Day, after this column is published). press).

The year was equal parts anger, outrage, violence and boredom.

The US presidential election campaign was strange in some ways, but not in a way that would make it particularly interesting, unless dementia, opportunistic stair climbing and the Truth Social equivalent of “nasty tweets” happen to be your hobbies.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continued, but were more of a “major downer” than a “major development.” Many committees, not very many steps towards peace or even closure.

And so on and so forth. It just wasn’t a very good year.

Mind you, I’m not complaining on a PERSONAL level. I’m glad that my family made it through 2024 without any major medical or financial setbacks, and that I became a little more adventurous as my golden (grayer?) years approached (namely because my actual nuclear family was dead and unable to care for me or rant, I started riding a motorcycle). I hope your year was good too and suspect that it probably went better in inverse proportion to the attention you paid to politics and world affairs.

Politicians should leave us alone over the holidays

I also wish you and your loved ones happy, healthy and successful holidays and a new year.

That brings me to my recommendation to achieve this result NEXT year.

There should be a law.

If you know me at all, you know I don’t say that very often.

But I really think this could be important. In bogus legalese, here is my suggestion:

“No government employee, elected or appointed government official, or candidate for election or appointment to any government office shall make, express, or issue any public statement relating to such positions between midnight of December 18th of the current year and midnight of January 1st.” of next year.”

No speeches. No press conferences. No press releases. No social media posts on “official” accounts. If you want to say “Merry Christmas” to family members in person, over the phone, on your personal social media accounts, etc., that’s fine. But none of this “my fellow Americans” stuff. If you don’t annoy or annoy your fellow Americans, you’re just boring us. So stop your barking for a few weeks and leave us alone.

I guess such a law would conflict with the First Amendment…but most of those affected don’t care about the First Amendment anyway, right?

Happy holidays.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.