In politics, in business, in the cultural discourse that plays out on a never-ending doom loop on our screens and in our heads, the year has been marked by the triumph of cynical expediency, the relentless pursuit of self-interest dressed up as public-spirited principle.
Political leaders, business chiefs and the media and entertainment figures they ventriloquize have grasped their opportunities in this tempestuous year to advance their own causes. A pandemic, urban violence, the machinery of electoral democracy—all carefully repurposed and packaged in a gauzy wrapping of useful lies to ensure above all else their gain.