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GELFAND’S WORLD - I first started writing for CityWatch when founder Ken Draper asked me to do an end-of-year column, sometime back around 2006. Previous to that, I was the On Media writer for American Reporter, an experience which has influenced my time here at CW. More about the current condition of our media as we proceed, but let’s start with one of the more trivial stories of the year, and go from there.
Most of us, while waiting to check out in the supermarket, have passed by those publications referred to as tabloids, the National Enquirer being the best known. They all seem to have an obsession with royalty, and in particular with the British royals. (They are also obsessed with Hollywood celebrities, particularly those who can provide a delicious sex scandal, but let’s concentrate on the Royals, as they like to be called.)
About 10 or 15 years ago, the tabloids began concentrating on how old Queen Elizabeth was getting. Well, she was already in her mid-80s, and on the theory that nobody lives forever, the tabloids attempted to gin up a story that she was – to put it delicately – on the way out. In fact, I can remember passing the rows of candy bars and seeing the phrase “Dying Queen” repeatedly over the years. It’s curious that publications featured in thousands upon thousands of American retail establishments engaged in a great game of slander against one of the world’s best recognized women, and there was little response from any other part of the media establishment.
I only bring this subject up at all because – it seems to me – treating the British royalty as important or authentically powerful is akin to viewing a road runner cartoon as reality. After all, when you think of it, the conclusion has to be that the only reason a modern nation would allow for (and even encourage) the continuing existence of its own monarchy is that the people who hold all those titles are not really monarchs at all.
That is, when we think of kings and queens in the storybook sense, we are using the term to refer to people with real power and authority. No British royal will be obeyed after ordering, “Off with their heads!” Yet in the past, such orders were given and were obeyed. There’s a lesson here about the right to be taken to see a judge after being arrested, as opposed to being flown to some foreign gulag. It is one of the most serious lessons of 2025 and we forget this lesson at our own risk.
So it’s a funny thing about those British royals: the king isn’t really a king, else a modern democracy would abolish the position in a second. But every other time I walk through Vons, I’m treated to a blaring headline about how Charles is going to remake William and William is going to punish Harry. In previous years, there were lots of stories about how Elizabeth had already secretly decreed that William was going to be the next king and not Charles. And, it’s a sign of how imaginary the British monarchy is that Andrew (formerly Prince Andrew) has not been imprisoned on some rock in the Mediterranean. I mean, they did it with Napoleon.
It’s amusing to realize that there was, at one time, this real version of Fake News. When you go through the supermarket checkout line, you will notice that fake news still exists. It’s just that the president identifies the wrong sources as being fake.
And that observation raises this one: When are the journalists who follow the president around going to protest when Trump uses that insulting term “fake news” and when are they going to challenge him by saying, “No, it’s true” and then explaining that fact to the American people?
Meanwhile, as the British people view their own monarchy with what is essentially tongue in cheek, there are two or three guys who want to be the King of France. And this leads us to another thought.
There is this end-of-2025 concern: There has been an increasing move towards the right among voters all over the civilized world. The late Kevin Drum offered an explanation, that inflation due to the Covid pandemic had stimulated protest voting in every country which had suffered from it, and the United States with its 2% Trump victory was no different. Remember the price of eggs?
Perhaps the lesson of the 2024 election and the political disasters of 2025 is that Democratic candidates should learn to be better at making impossible promises, just the way Republicans have learned.
Which brings us to the frightening lesson we have begun to learn in this year of 2025: As our nation’s founders warned, we need to be concerned about those who have authority and power, and we need to provide protections against abuse. The closest example in this, the County of Los Angeles, is the federal organization known as ICE. The examples of abuse of power are abundant, and we’ve found ourselves at least temporarily stuck, not knowing how to free ourselves from some clear and obvious violations of traditional American principles.
So as we think about the year 2025, we ask, “is it going to continue this way, or is it going to get worse?” The beginning of fascism, or at least fascist activities by the federal government, is the major political story for 2025.
But there are other stories to remember and to tell. The January fires continue to create grief and stress. Most of the affected properties remain to be rebuilt or repaired. Insurance companies are the targets of a lot of consumer anger, but there is a bigger issue. Global warming has to be recognized as a significant causal factor in the fires. We ought to recognize this in the fact that the cycle of rain and drought later later combined with Santana winds at hurricane-equivalent velocity, resulting in mass destruction over wide areas. We’ve had a lot of brush fires over the past few decades, but the ability of flames to move over long distances and wide areas in remarkably short periods of time is something different. The previous fire that moved from the hills of the 101 freeway down to Malibu in mere hours should have been a warning.
So another memory of 2025 is that global warming is here, and its effects are recognizable. The corollary is that we have to think about – and prepare for – more such events. I keep asking this question: Suppose the valley has a full week where the temperature hits 123 every day and only drops to 115 at night? How many fatalities would this cause, particularly if the high temperatures result in electricity outages? And that is precisely what happens when the system is already overloaded by air conditioner usage and then one electric source fails. So what have we done to prepare ourselves?
One conclusion from the year of 2025 is that our city government is not working adequately to prepare for such events. Oh, they are doing the window dressing (we have a heat emergency officer) but the real (and expensive) preparation just isn’t there. Allow me to phrase this the way a couple of my colleagues phrased things a few days ago when they gave the city government grades of F for most of what it does. In terms of preparation for a heat emergency, the City of Los Angeles gets a D minus: It gets just a little better than an F because it actually recognizes the existence of the problem and has created one staff position in response. It gets the D minus for everything else it should have done but didn’t.
There is one last story for today, but it is huge and unnecessary and tragic all at once. It is the (potential) downfall of the United States as the leader of the free world. This leadership has been economic and scientific and military, to mention the more important elements. The year 2025 has brought us a self-made catastrophe in the form of a war against science, a war against scientific medicine, a war against a crucial and effective world trading system, and a war against thought itself. I don’t have to tell you where it’s coming from. I should, however, remind you that it is enabled by Trump’s whole political party, which has become obsessed with the idea that students in agricultural states will be exposed in school and college to dangerous ideas – ideas such as the fact that slavery existed and was defended by law and Constitution, and that it was a really, really bad thing. To say differently is to be accused of being Woke. Perhaps we should reframe this particular word into the phrase Awakened to Historical Facts. Now there’s a grand awakening we could savor.
I think that the other big story for 2025 which will become chronic in 2026 is Donald Trump’s increasing loss of personal control and continuing mental decline. Trump’s initial online remarks about the death of Rob Reiner are just one more indication, a particularly egregious symptom in a long series. We should expect continuing deterioration, but where that will lead is a guess.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
