2022 Year In Review

How To Salvage A Reputation

It’s weird doing this when the success has come at the end of the year, honestly.

Last year I did a year in Review for this site, and it was a weird thing where my biggest success (Canada) came before my biggest disaster (Virginia), which meant that even though the year was I think on the whole a success, it felt odd trying to write about it as one. Here it’s the inverse, because a fundamentally flawed first half of the year (Ontario) led to a second half that I think is inarguably my best run of form.

The instinct to just ignore Ontario – on the basis it happened earlier in the year, and that by the time election day happened I did correctly say the PCs would win a sizable majority, is tempting, but obvious bullshit. I got it very wrong and don’t feel the insecurity to try and pretend otherwise.

The reason I got it wrong was simple – my logic for why the Liberals would win was a two-part process, and one of those parts was wrong. In Step 1, I assumed the PCs would, when the dust settled and the voters actually voted, get 35% of the vote, and that the left would consolidate to ensure that the PCs didn’t win a majority with such a low vote share. Step 2 of that was that the Ontario NDP were incompetent chucklefucks who would prove themselves to be such, and their vote would crash.

Step 2 of that was correct, but I assumed that voters would go Liberal instead of splitting between the PCs, the Liberals, and just not voting at all because the options sucked. My error wasn’t assuming that the voters would pay more attention than they did, it was actually probably the opposite – the Liberal campaign of good soundbites and fundamental nothingness underneath it was clearly offputting to a lot of people, whereas I assumed the soundbites would appeal because I thought that’s as much attention as people would pay.

The answer to take from that election is simple – my mistake was doing strong takes in 2021 about an election 5 months into 2022, but the problem was I was trying to build a following on the basis of a genuinely spotty electoral record. The difference now, and the lesson I’ve heeded in how I’ve covered Alberta, is that there’s not always a necessity to force growth.

Probably the coolest part of 2022 hasn’t necessarily been the results called correctly – although, Jean Charest to get 16% of the points in the CPC leadership election is a personal life highlight – but more the way that I’ve managed to find my role. In a media ecosystem where everyone can be anything, I think my specific brand of both snark but also deep thinking is one that I’m genuinely surprised is not more common. And with that, I think it’s much more the meditations that stand out to me than the predictions.

From my destroying the Nova Scotia RCMP for their lies to the way that I’ve written about the Convoy, an immense amount of pride flows through me. I’m not always right and unlike past times in my life I’m not always going to pretend I am. But what I do know, and what I’ve never really had an innate sense of, is that there are few who can rival my abilities to write. Put aside whether you like or loathe the content of what I’m saying, I feel good about the choice to devote so much of my time to this.

What’s it all mean for 2023? I think quite a bit, actually. There’s a lot of lessons from both the victories and defeats of this year, and hopefully they’ll end up helping, but here’s a few of the biggest ones.

Pick Battles You Can Win

In the past, I’ve been too comfortable opining on politics as if I am, plainly, just some shitposter. I have a lot of opinions about politics, but the problem (the most first world problem in the world, I know) is that I have to not just tweet them like I could before I had a substantial following. There are limits to what can be gained by tweeting, to take the most obvious example, Alberta NDP optimism, but the problem is, I can tweet that they would do well in an election right now and all I’d fundamentally be doing is betting that nothing changes between now and then. Not looking for a shitload of hopeclicks will do me wonders over time in reducing the amount of accumulated shrapnel I end up with.

Less Predictions, More Meditations

The pieces that tend to do best on this site, and the ones that I enjoy going back to, aren’t the predictions, generally speaking. It’s the times when I go into a topic and draw something out of it. They’re the most fun to write and they’re the ones that linger, and frankly I’m mad I didn’t do more of them before the US.

If this site has any value, it is not just in the idea that my predictions are worth hearing, but it’s in the idea that my brain – my entirely fucked, deeply weird, and intensely illogical brain – has some insight into the world that is worth sharing. If that’s the case, then frankly the answer is probably to expose you all to more of it.

Less Arrogance

The thing that marked me in the past was that when I got things right I was deeply, deeply arrogant, and when I would get something right, I would think I could never get anything wrong again. My mood would swing heavily from defeat to victory, and it’s just a deeply unpleasant state of being.

Now? I have a better sense of what matters and what doesn’t, and in this case, it’s clear that I’m never as brilliant as I feel after success nor as stupid as I feel after failure. Luck finds its level, and sometimes I’ll be on both sides of it. Pretending it’s all skill is a mistake I used to make.

I do really mean it when I say I appreciate everyone who reads this site, from the reporters and journalists I am honoured care what I have to say to the people who are always there with a like and a retweet, I care about you deeply and I appreciate your support. I wouldn’t do this if there wasn’t an audience, and I love y’all dearly. Have a good 2023, y’all.