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Hopefully this isn’t horribly apparent, but this piece was a slog to write. It required overcoming my professional disposition, resisting my cognitive wiring, and drying out from a certain website that I used to fiendishly inhale.
For a long moment in global politics, the planet seemed to be hurtling toward authoritarianism. It was terrifying, but I found myself strangely suited for apocalyptic times. Evolutionary biology had left me with a mind that scans the savanna for predators, and events confirmed that wasn’t a vestigial instinct. As someone who easily imagines the worst, I felt seen by the Fates and Furies. Besides, the assault on democracy provided an invigorating sense of journalistic purpose.
But several months back, my sense of dread began to ebb. This coincided with my decision to remove Twitter from my phone—an attempt to remove a principal source of distraction. For a time, I would pull my device from my pocket and, zombie-like, would try to conjure the app, entering the letters T-W-I into the search bar, only to find that no such thing existed. I wasn’t going cold turkey exactly, because I still visited the site on my laptop. But my weekly screen-time reports suggested the possibilities of psychic liberation.
The Jeremiah in my brain began murmuring instead of shouting. And as this year draws to a close, a strange sensation, one that I don’t entirely trust, has begun to wash over me: optimism.
My Twitter withdrawal is not the only reason for my change in mood; I think it just allowed me to notice and accept good news. Of course, this was a year filled with plenty of fresh horrors. But for the first time in a long while, there are meaningful counterpoints, enough of them for me to feel as if the world might be finally reversing its antidemocratic course.
Almost every positive development caught me by surprise because I had so conditioned myself to expect the worst. The creaky old transatlantic alliance rallied to the Ukrainian cause—an act of noble sacrifice, which hasn’t dissipated even as prices have risen as a direct consequence of the alliance’s commitment to sanctions. Polities in Europe and the United States that not so long along seemed indifferent to autocracy and to be careening toward xenophobia are engaged in the most selfless act of solidarity in recent memory.
Back in March, Francis Fukuyama, a prophet of optimism, suggested that Ukraine’s example of resistance might help spiritually rally liberal democracies to defend themselves against internal threats. He called it a revival of the “spirit of 1989.”
That prediction, which I doubted when he issued it, has come to pass. Even if I can’t prove that the causation tracks with Fukuyama’s argument, the results are palpable. Since the start of the Ukraine war, Western democracies have voted to cast aside populist goons. Emmanuel Macron held off Marine Le Pen. In October, Brazilians disposed of Jair Bolsonaro. In the midterm elections, the United States roundly repudiated election-denying Republicans, evidence of Donald Trump’s waning influence.
As in 1989, resistance to authoritarianism has spread to corners of the world where few analysts had predicted widespread dissent. Protests in Iran and China might be ephemeral bursts of frustration. But the Chinese demonstrations were worrying enough to the Communist Party that it dislodged the regime’s zero-COVID policy. And the Iranian protesters have persisted despite the reality of the truncheon and the threat of the gallows.
Fukuyama is not the only one who has been vindicated. President Joe Biden has argued that democracies can prevail only if they demonstrate their efficacy. After years of dysfunction, the U.S. Congress has had a fertile cycle of legislating. It made massive investments in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and clean energy. After decades in which European leaders hectored American presidents for failing to meaningfully act to control climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act could cut emissions by 40 percent compared with their all-time high. (And as my former colleague Robinson Meyer has argued, that number might very well be understated.)
None of this mitigates the many sound reasons for pessimism. Ukraine’s survival is no longer tenuous, but Russian crimes against humanity persist. Although U.S. voters punished Republicans for the Dobbs decision, the constriction of abortion rights is the new reality in dozens of states. Reports of Donald Trump’s demise are usually just wishful.
But I’m apparently not alone in detaching myself from the psychic grip of apocalyptic thinking. A world that worries is a world that clicks incessantly and can’t stop watching cable news. And both media traffic and ratings have collapsed as democracy has stopped clinging to the precipice. As a parochial matter, I hate that people aren’t paying as much attention. But perhaps this is another reason for optimism. Optimism, how does that even feel? I’m not sure; it’s been far too long.