Doer, doofus or boring.

The year in review.

It's the time of the year once again when we wax nostalgic on things that stirred our souls during this particular orbit of the earth around the sun.

“Soul stirring,” mind you, may come of a number of origins. One's soul may be stirred to shimmering heights as a result of love, humor, achievement or as the result of exposure to some work of art, music or literature. One may be uplifted, vicariously, by the success experienced by friends or loved ones.

Unfortunately, one's soul may also be stirred to the depths of despair by loss, anger or pain. Too much time on the Interwebs (especially in the wrong places) has profoundly deleterious outcomes for mental health. Bad habits that one cannot shake are often the road to mental perdition.

For the most part, each passing year is a mixture of good and bad. With that in mind, here are the things that stood out to me during 2022 ACE. Not everything that follows was equally soul-stirring, in either direction, but all of it was, at least to me, very interesting. With that in mind, let's look at doers, doofuses and those who were just plain boring

Doers. Republicans discovered the political math of addition via subtraction by watching Trump-endorsed candidates get unambiguously clocked in the midterms. Individual races, in most cases, were close, but the overall rejection is difficult to misinterpret. Democrats ran the table against candidates favored by the former President. Had the Republicans stood up to the loser-in-chief and his minions earlier and put forth better candidates, they would now probably control Congress.

Republicans, nationwide, have a deep bench, they just have to clear out the undeserving MAGA candidates blocking the way for others that independent voters would choose in a heartbeat over most Democrats. It was a tough lesson for the GOP, but I think they got the message. If they want to win elections it's time to ditch Trump.

Doofus. Trump accomplished a few things as President of which I approve. Unfortunately, though unfairly put upon by much of the media and the federal bureaucracy (both of which functioned, vis-à-vis Trump, like extensions of the DNC), Trump's legacy is irredeemably tarnished by the events of January 6th and his baseless claims of a stolen election.

The election in question may have, in fact, been stolen (more on that below), but not in the manner claimed by the former President. About the only way that Donald Trump could sink any lower in my estimation would be if he showed up on TV with an E-meter and a copy of Dianetics, hawking Scientology.

Doers. “Misery,” as sayeth the Bard, “acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, all embroiled in the current Twitter tempest, are strange bedfellows united in standing up for the First Amendment - at great cost.

It's cost Musk $44 billion to purchase Twitter and send some woke riff-raff packing to pull back the curtain on government-inspired attempts at circumventing the First Amendment. It appears that Federal agencies, from the CDC to the FBI and possibly the White House, found a willing partner in Twitter to eliminate speech of which they disapproved.

To many observers, including myself, it seems as if Twitter has functioned, at times, as an arm of the government and various political entities for much of the past six years. It's apparent, for instance, that the former regime at Twitter was all in on defeating Donald Trump - to the extent of suppressing factually true but unflattering news about Joe Biden. It's clear that Twitter acquiesced to the government by suppressing factually sound debate about Covid-19.

None of this, though untoward, is a First Amendment issue. It might be a violation of campaign funding laws, but that's the extent of it. What clearly is a violation of the First Amendment is the government being involved in any way, shape, form, manner or style in suppression of speech – including encouraging it.

Journalists everywhere should be howling about this. The fact that they are not is incredible. It's also an unflattering sign of how far the profession has fallen.

What journalists are howling about instead of the suppression of speech is Taibbi and Weiss, who are under attack from liberal media (most of it) for being lapdogs to Twitter CEO Musk. None of this, mind you, on account of the message being wrong, but on account of the messengers.

Not that Musk, Taibbi or Weiss necessarily give a hoot about what the rest of the media thinks about them. Musk seems to delight in taunting (and slaying) progressive authoritarians. It's quite a bit of fun to observe the posing and preening, the confusion and consternation surrounding the left's moral dilemma over how to best virtue-signal: drive a Tesla or leave Twitter for Mastodon.

Weiss and Taibbi have, between them, around a half-million Substack subscribers. Not only are both very likely better off financially as independent journalists, but neither has to abandon their principles in order to function in a modern newsroom.

My quote of the year is from Musk and it concerns the current Twitter shakeup. After discovering that Twitter's Deputy General Counsel, Jim Baker (a former FBI general counsel at the center of much controversy in that role) had been vetting the “Twitter files” that were supposed to be released immediately to Weiss and Taibbi, Musk made Baker's new titles “was” and “were.” When a Twitter user asked Musk if Baker had an opportunity to explain himself before being dismissed, Musk responded: “Yes His explanation was... unconvincing.”

Boring. Though the State of Idaho has not executed a death row inmate in more than a decade, Gerald Pizzuto Jr. was scheduled to be next up on December 15th. A shortage of the chemicals used for lethal injection in Idaho has put this on hold. Pizzuto's defenders want to block the execution entirely because he is terminally ill, suffering from COPD, diabetes and other maladies.

Pizzuto, a lifelong criminal, had served prison time for rape and was responsible for two other murders before coming to Idaho, where he brutally murdered Berta and Del Herndon during a robbery. Though I have some discomfort with the death penalty, this, in my opinion, is a case where execution is clearly warranted.

I have a solution. Pizzuto should be fed a steady diet of Leonard Hitchcock columns until he sheds his mortal coil. It would certainly be effective. I'm just not sure if it would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, arranging and playing music. His writing on Substack, “Howlin' at the Moon in ii-V-I” may be found at martinhackworth.substack.com. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth