WINNERS:

The evil, necropolitical core of the American soul: Between locking up immigrant children in cages until they literally keel over dead; retaining close ties with Saudi Arabia, even as they murder journalists and kill thousands in Yemen, all for the sake of oil and weapons deals; and being more willing to deploy troops to the border in order to try and win an election than to deploy them to help American citizens in Puerto Rico recover from a devastating hurricane, it’s really been a banner year for the country’s deep-seated lust for lubricating the gears of empire with the blood of the downtrodden

Israel: Well, they won Eurovision, at least

Centrism: Between the election of a wave of exciting new progressives and socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley defeating establishment Democrats, the rapidly-rising support for progressive policies like a Green New Deal and Medicare For All, moderates in other countries like French president Emmanuel Macron being so disastrous that they currently enjoy lower approval ratings than Donald Trump, the ever-increasing popular support for all matter of social-justice issues, and this dumb-as-hell proposal that Joe Biden and Mitt Romney should join up to run against Trump in 2020 being laughed out of the room pretty much immediately, 2019 is shaping up to be a banner year for proponents of cautious, status-quo-perpetuating compromise

Ted Cruz: The fact that the junior United States Senator from Texas (in the Senate) is listed as a “Winner” should tell you all you need to know about 2018

Chuck Schumer: Scored some massive wins for the Democrats in 2018, such as fast-tracking a bunch of Trump-nominated judicial appointments in exchange for a couple extra days of campaigning and standing firm that Donald Trump wouldn’t get more than $1.6 billion for his wholly immoral and completely unnecessary border wall

Spike Lee: Triumphantly returned to form with BlackKkKlansman, 2018’s best movie, which tells a satisfying, cathartic tale of kicking the butts of dumb racists and absolutely doesn’t subsequently crush your spirits with any sort of gut-wrenching reality check or deeper, more depressing message

Brett Kavanaugh: The new Supreme Court justice provided 2018’s most inspiring story, showing that, no matter how gross or criminal or ethically compromised or incompetent you are, you can still get any job you want if you just have the right person refer you

The Democratic Party: Now control one half of one of the three branches of government, which means everything will be good in 2019

Dr. #Content: Look, a lot of awful, depressing stuff happened in 2018, but it’s also the year in which I wrote an epic poem, which is pretty neato

LOSERS:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Would have undeniably been the year’s breakout star, but then Patrick Mahomes threw a bunch of touchdowns

Don Blankenship: In the year’s greatest show of amateurish stupidity, this former (evil) coal baron thought he could win a Republican primary in West Virginia with a slate of incompetent campaign ads railing about Mitch McConnell—a fellow Republican from a different state—and the Chinese, lost, tried to keep running a third-party candidate, ran afoul of the state’s sore-loser law, took the matter all the way to the West Virginia Supreme Court, and lost again

The New York Times: 

 

 

yeah, don’t think I really need to explain this one

Brian France: No, wait, this was the year’s greatest show of stupidity. The widely reviled CEO of NASCAR was finally ousted from the position after being arrested for DWI and drug possession—but not before dealing the sport one last black eye by timing his arrest to distract from maybe the most positive NASCAR story in years—and then somehow topped that barely two weeks later by donating $50,000 to a GoFundMe for Michael Cohen’s legal fees and forgetting to make it anonymous

Donald Trump: Had a terrific year, what are you talking about

Brazil: Too depressing to joke about right now, honestly

Jacob Wohl: No, hang on, this is the one. Wohl, who managed to get banned for life from futures trading at age 19 and who proudly tweeted about how the US national soccer team was going to kick butt in the World Cup a whole six months after they failed to qualify, has recently made his name as one of the most obnoxious and persistent pro-Trump brown-nosers on Twitter, becoming one of those guys who replies within five seconds to every Trump tweet. That means millions of people are familiar with his Twitter profile picture, which will be relevant in a moment. Anyways, he decided he was going to take down Robert Mueller by paying a couple of women to falsely accuse the special counsel of sexual assault. One of these women apparently reached out to prominent journalists and media figures, some of whom began digging to see who had made her the offer in the first place. The answer? Something called “Surefire Intelligence”, whose listed phone number belonged to Wohl’s mother, and whose “employees” on LinkedIn were obviously fake profiles using photos of globally-known figures like Christoph Waltz, Bar Refaeli, and Wohl’s Twitter profile pic—the same one he’d made known to millions of people—with a bunch of sliders turned way down in Photoshop. With the whole scheme collapsing around him after less than a day, Wohl arranged a hasty press conference with his co-conspirator, who went through the whole thing without noticing that his fly was open.

So take heart, I guess, that there’s no way your 2019 will as embarrassing as that

Kanye West: Who would have thought that an incredibly self-absorbed man of considerable influence within his sphere would begin to think that his skill and influence in his field of choice qualified him to speak with authority on everything else

Louis C.K.: A last-minute entry, the disgraced comedian, looking to re-invent himself on the comedy scene after confessing to be exactly the sort of creep his career had been built around decrying, emerged triumphantly onto the stage at one of New York’s most prominent comedy clubs, with edgy, groundbreaking jokes such as [checks notes] saying that Asian men have small penises, mocking school shooting survivors for being too politically active, and literally just retelling the “I identify as an attack helicopter” joke that’s been floating around on the internet for years

Ted Cruz: You know what, I changed my mind. Sure, he was reelected, but nobody who thinks this beard looks good can possibly be called a Winner