2022 Beat All Expectations – The Bulwark
[Editor’s note: Watch Not My Party every week on Snapchat.]
Tim Miller: It’s the holidays and our 100th episode. So let’s celebrate all the winning.
Austin Powers (Mike Myers in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me): Yeah, baby, yeah.
Miller: This is “Not My Party,” brought to you by The Bulwark. Y’all, I’m so filled with the Christmas spirit that I even made some friends at the Turning Point USA Conference this past weekend. Now maybe I didn’t connect with everyone.
Kari Lake: Bastards of the media wanna drag him through the mud.
Miller: So I wanted to leave you this year with a message of joy, because in 2022 things turned out pretty darn great.
Omar Little (Michael K. Williams on The Wire): Do tell.
Miller: For starters, it might have been the best single year for a president in about a decade. Joe Biden did what the pundits didn’t really think he could, bring back compromise.
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart on Star Trek: The Next Generation): Perhaps it’s still alive.
Miller: There was a sensible gun bill, protecting gay marriage, and the CHIPS Act to grow manufacturing and help us compete with China—all that with bipartisan support. Plus an imperfect, partisan, not-really-inflation-reducing bill that does deserve props for being the largest investment in climate in our history. And capping prescription drug prices.
Kip Dynamite (Aaron Ruell in Napoleon Dynamite): That sounds pretty good.
Miller: And he deftly managed the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which could’ve gone way worse than it has, thanks, of course, to the Ukrainians’ valor and the world’s number one sigma male.
Miller: We stand, we fight, and we will win because we are united. . . . Ukraine, America, and the entire free world.
Miller: Using many NATO weapons to fight back against the fascist bastards who encroached on their country.
Kaleen Webber (Emilia Klayn in Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines): Fuck you. Go home.
Miller: And to cap it all off, his party exceeded expectations in the midterms. But most important for us was the way in which they did it. While the handful of normal Republicans did just fine, every single lying, election-denying fraud who was running in a competitive race got what was coming them—especially her.
Hayley Smith (from American Dad): What a loser.
Miller: And they weren’t the only ones to get some righteous comeuppance. The Oath Keepers and January 6th rioters are getting the—
Donald Trump: Law and order!
Miller: —that they deserve.
Raul de Morana (Fred Armisen on Parks and Recreation): Right to jail.
Miller: And so is SBF and the scamming crypto bros for whom winter is finally coming.
De Morana: Also jail.
Miller: And as for the rest of the economy, while still a little bumpy, it’s responding to the post-COVID and Ukrainian-invasion shock much better than expected. Fears of recession have not yet come to pass, and the price hikes are finally easing.
Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny): Knock on wood.
Miller: We’ve also had unreal scientific advances this year.
Donna Lu: Researchers found that snakes actually have two clitorises.
Marissa Wilson (Jessica Alba in Spy Kids: All the Time in the World): That’s not what he meant.
Miller: Last week there was a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough that might just lead to an unlimited, zero-carbon energy source in the foreseeable future.
Morpheus presenter (from Doctor Who): The future is here.
Miller: And there’s some smarties out there, working to make this commercially viable, while the Big Oil guys look over their shoulder.
June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss on The Handmaid’s Tale): Change is coming.
Miller: The mRNA COVID vaccine that saved millions of lives and allowed us all to party freely again, continued to hold up, unlike the Chinese knockoff.
Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight): Made in China. I recommend you buy American.
Miller: And this successful technology is leading to other breakthroughs. In the future, we might be able to blunt the seasonal flu and the next pandemic much faster.
Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis on Lucifer): Next time, we’ll be ready.
Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels in Speed): Yeah right.
Miller: Plus, there’s a new malaria vaccine that’s responding well in trial, and new immunotherapies treating rectal and breast cancer that are yielding miraculous results without chemo.
Jocelyn Schitt (Jennifer Robertson on Schitt’s Creek): That’s good news for everybody.
Dad (Jordan Peele on Key & Peele): That’s science, so that’s true.
Miller: And don’t forget the AI handsome-making machine.
Eric Cartman (from South Park): Science this and science that.
Miller: And on top of all that, we had Saint Liz Cheney showing us what political courage looks like. We got a lit new Beyoncé record. ‘Big D’ Joe Burrow made the Super Bowl. And we all get to live on the same planet with the majestic Nikola Jokić. That, my friends, is what you call being blessed.
Crowd (from Monty Python’s Life of Brian): A blessing.
Miller: This show came into existence during a time we were all going through some weird shit. So I wanted to remind myself, and all of you, that we can’t become addicted to thinking everything’s the worst, to doomscrolling. Let’s use these holidays to celebrate the progress—all the best we’ve had—and share the good news with our friends and family who might not be hearing it.
Hubert J. Farnsworth (from Futurama): Good news, everyone.
Miller: Thank you all so much for watching this show. I wish you a merry Christmas, a happy New Year. We’re gonna take a one-week break and then we’ll see you in 2023 for more “Not My Party.”