“A New Year’s note to readers.”

Brief thoughts on the year gone by and the year ahead.

La Verseuse. Robert Delaunay, 1916. (Wikimedia Commons.)

30 DECEMBER—There must be many years at the end of which it is tempting to rank them among the truly awful. Maybe this thought is a comment on our times. Maybe there have been passages in history—there must have been—when those alive looked back with satisfaction at a year lived honorably and productively. However this may be, 2023 must indeed to go into the books as one of serial failures. All of these, or most, we have considered in our commentaries, so no need to rehearse them here.

I think we ought to look beyond the messes, cruelties, dishonesty, and corruptions to see the drift of things, our brief bit of the longue durée. This is positive, or has positive aspects to it.

Nick Kristof, the compulsively smiling Boy Scout of The New York Times opinion page, published a column this morning under the headline, “This Was a Terrible Year, and Also Maybe the Best One Yet for Humanity.” You always get the same thing with these kinds of pieces: The writers revert to statistics, abstract metrics that obscure far more than they reveal. In this case we read that, historically, nearly half of children who die did so by the age of 15. But child mortality is now at a record low: Only 3.6 percent die by the age of 5. I can’t line up these stats to see Kristof’s point, but I hope they are reading Nick’s work in Gaza so all the children know what a good year they have had.

No, let’s leave the smiles to Nick Kristof. But let’s think for ourselves and recognize that the great arc of history bends in the right direction. The American imperium’s decline steepened the past year, the non–West’s influence rose, and the “rules-based order” is now exposed as the appalling fraud it is. More people are more aware now of the world as it truly is. More people understand mainstream media as propagators of propaganda, more people are reading and supporting independent publications such as those I write for and, indeed, The Floutist. All good.

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I come to the true point of this brief essay. It is to thank all of our subscribers, and all of those who support the work via the Patreon account, for a year of greatly appreciated encouragement and wherewithal. It has made an enormous difference to our stability and altogether our peace of mind. Immense gratitude.    

Personally, I managed to get a book out this past autumn. Journalists and Their Shadows is now available directly from the good people at Clarity Press or via Amazon, where someone, I have no idea who, has written a very thoughtful appraisal. This was a long gestation and a somewhat difficult birth. I would not have got the book, my sixth, finished and published without the support of readers. More immense gratitude.

The Floutist saw new writers into its pages this past year, not least Cara Marianna and Luka Filipović. As their pieces suggest, our tilt is toward intellectually stimulating work intended to prompt thought rather than across-the-board agreement. When I began writing for independent publications—a decade ago as of the year gone past, now that I think of it—I figured the world did not need another columnist producing, thrice weekly like sausages, 750–word restatements of the obvious. I determined to blur the distinction between the column genre and the essay. This is what the above-mentioned writers do, and how we intend to shape The Floutist in the year to come.

I cannot end this note without mentioning the valued friendships I have formed with various readers and supporters. This is something new to someone who trained and spent many years in the in the traditional press. It is a wonderful benefit of digital publishing. How good to count so many of you as friends.

As I write to new subscribers when they arrive, stay with us. And a New Year’s best wish to all of you.

—P. L.

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