Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya, 2022! A lot happened during the year, and in any other year, stories like the assault of the Speaker of the House’s spouse, a megalomaniacal billionaire impulse-purchasing a major social media platform (and subsequently destroying it), or the death of England’s longest-serving monarch would be some of the top stories.
But this year, they didn’t even make the cut to the top 10. Others that fell below the fold: the cryptocurrency debacle; Iran’s women’s rights demonstrations; the ongoing climate crisis, particularly in the American west due to lower water levels in the Colorado River; billion-dollar legal decisions against Alex Jones; Nancy Pelosi’s resignation as Speaker; and the space exploration advancements led by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Orion program. And way outside NatZero’s sweet spot are the sports and celebrity news, like the Britney Griner detainment, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, or the deaths of a lot of people and the (ex-) Pope.
Taunting the Gods of the Trite and the Tired, here’s my list of the Top 10 stories of 2022 and–spoiler alert!–Hunter Biden’s laptop is not one of them. And to the chagrin of Fox acolytes, neither is the “ongoing immigration crisis at the Southern border” they tout… because these are actually important stories.
10. The Continuing Pandemic: How fucked up does a year have to be when more than a quarter million Americans die in one year from a pandemic virus and it isn’t the top story? Omicron swept the world, and researchers developed a series of vaccines adapted to counter the threat. But insolent conservatives continued to resist the march of science, resulting in Republicans being 76% more likely to die from coronavirus, leading more credence to Darwinism.
9. Ketanji Brown Jackson: Heeding the warning Ruth Bader Ginsberg made with her grave, reliably liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced in January his intent to retire at the end of the Court’s 2021-22 session, opening a seat on the Court for President Joe Biden to fill. Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman and (just as noteworthy) the first former public defender to serve on the nation’s highest court.
8. Codifying Right to Marriage: In an opinion that may foreshadow a future list entry, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that he wanted the Supreme Court to revisit a number of other rights that had been defined in previous SCOTUS rulings–Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell–each of which confirmed a specific right reviled by conservatives in public (though likely not in their private lives): to contraceptives, to non-reproductive sexual acts, and to LGBTQ marriage recognition. Congress acted, passing the Respect for Marriage Act, which (simplistically) mandated that a marriage license legally issued in one state be honored in all states, thereby ensuring LGBTQ spouses have their rights throughout the country even if specific states attempt to ban gay marriage.
7. FBI Searches Mar-a-Lago: Donald Trump’s (alleged) crimes are, of course, noteworthy, but the fact that the FBI took the unprecedented action of getting a search/seizure warrant for the home of a former President of the United States is historic. And the fact that the agents were searching for government documents–including a cache of highly classified documents–makes it all the more grist for history books. One of his many legal perils in 2022 (which may foreshadow another list), the search awakened many Republicans to just how reckless and careless a politician Donald Trump is.
6. Uvalde School Shooting: Twenty students and two teachers were killed in another school shooting in the United States. But unlike other mass shootings in the nation–in Buffalo or Highland Park, Illinois adding to the more than 44,000 gun deaths and at least 640 mass shootings in the country–Uvalde stands out for the incompetence of the police response as the gunman continued to execute children in the classroom while officers waited outside. The subsequent lies told by the administration of Republican Governor Greg Abbott, and by Abbott himself, added to the anger and pain over the incident.
5. The January 6th Committee Hearings: How can one summarize the historic and historical investigation, findings and presentation of the bipartisan committee dissecting the most pervasive attempt to undermine the United States Constitution from inside the government since the Civil War? The televised hearings, blockbuster testimony, and ongoing disclosures seemingly were overwhelming enough to prompt Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a Special Counsel to continue the investigation after Republicans take over the House next week and try to further obstruct the course of justice. The Committee’s findings will further complicate Trump’s already complicated legal future after this year.
4. Shocking (and subdued) Legislative Successes of Joe Biden: This is one where memes more effectively communicate the surprising volume and breadth of impactful legislation passed by the Biden Administration–supported by effective Democratic leadership in both Congressional chambers–from LGBTQ marriage to infrastructure to promoting American manufacturing. The final 2022 item: an omnibus spending bill that includes provisions to protect American elections. And while he’s gotten it done with an evenly split Senate, some of his policies, like student loan forgiveness, have been stifled due to conservative malfeasance. Still, their political benefit remains. If Biden can–(or more immediately, if Biden wants to)–continue it and capitalize on it for a reelection campaign has yet to be seen.
3. The Piddling Red Tsunami in the Midterms: A favorite National Zero punching bag, Joe Concha said in June that in the November midterms, “Voters are overwhelming going to reject this ‘liberal world order’ and restore order to the political universe.” Voters responded with a hardy, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Within 24 hours of the polls closing November 8th, Concha and every other conservative pundit who boasted of the coming Red Tsunami was trying to rationalize that getting a scant majority in the House and losing a Senate seat was exactly what they envisioned before admitting the soul-crushing fact that despite having the dominoes lined up for a major victory… well, Republicans campaigning on things like Hunter Biden’s laptop and kitty litter in classrooms didn’t win over voters who were more concerned about preserving rights and upholding the Constitution. Voters also enacted things conservatives hate via ballot measures in certain states: abortion rights, legalized cannabis, and the guaranteed right for LGBTQ people to marry were all on the ballot in various places, and with few exceptions relating to marijuana, passed with overwhelming support. The Republican Party remains in disarray, with no policies to run on and fights erupting about Party leadership at the RNC and in the upcoming House caucus. Historians may mark this as the definitive end of Trump as a political influence.
2. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: The Supreme Court decision to rescind the right to bodily autonomy, overruling the Roe opinion that outlined the right for a pregnant person to seek an abortion, was a clusterfuck from the get-go. A draft of the opinion outlining the Court’s proposed rationale was leaked in May, prompting millions to take to the streets in protest. When the opinion was officially released eight weeks later, the outrage remained and it persisted through the midterm elections. Believed to be the first time the Court revoked a Constitutional right it had previously affirmed, the Dobbs decision prompted scandal-ridden Justice Clarence Thomas to question in his concurring opinion the Court’s decisions affirming the rights to personal sexual choices, LGBTQ marriage and contraception. The decision put into stark focus the heavy-handed influence the radical right-wing justices on the Court will exert on the lives of ordinary Americans to impose a conservative agenda on society. The impact of this decision–horrific for women’s rights and human rights in the United States–will have lasting repercussions legally, judicially and politically which will not end well for conservatives.
1. Russia invades Ukraine: On February 24th, Russian troops streamed over the border into Ukraine, the first attempted invasion and annexation of a European country since World War II. The world responded: Russia was largely isolated economically and Western nations poured support into Ukraine. Led by a successful celebrity-turned-president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine absorbed the initial shock and responded with military victories that pushed back early Russian gains. The morass exposed the ineffectiveness of the Russian military and the incompetence of the Kremlin. Putin, rumored to be in worsening health, instituted an unpopular mandatory military conscription and inducted prisoners into the army’s ranks to fight on the front with little training. As a result of the invasion, inflation skyrocketed worldwide and fuel costs increased. Pro-Kremlin American conservatives–the likes of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Ron Johnson–attempt to divide the United States, claiming US aid that helps Ukraine defend itself is wasted and that Ukraine is actual part of Russia and Vladimir Putin should do more shirtless pics on horseback. Okay, maybe they didn’t say that last bit. In public.