Every year, as the calendar gasps its final, ragged breaths, we are subjected to the 'Year in Review'—that ritualistic autopsy of a corpse we were forced to inhabit for three hundred and sixty-five days. This year, the gatekeepers of our collective decline have curated a gallery of political cartoons, a medium designed specifically for a population that finds the alphabet too demanding and nuance an act of high treason. Edited by Matt Wuerker, this collection of ink-stained grievances is billed as a look back at the 'foibles and hypocrisies' of our age. In reality, it is a grim inventory of how effectively we have managed to transform the serious business of human civilization into a series of crude sketches for the amusement of the lobotomized.

There is something profoundly depressing about the political cartoonist’s survival in the digital age. They are the court jesters of a kingdom that no longer has a court, only a series of warring digital fiefdoms. On one side, we have the progressive illustrators, whose work serves as a high-fructose corn syrup injection for the 'I Believe in Science' crowd. Their drawings are less satire and more of a theological affirmation, usually featuring some caricature of a red-hatted Neanderthal clutching a Bible and a thermal-nuclear device, while a serene, enlightened figure looks on with the weary patience of a kindergarten teacher in a burning building. It is smug, it is repetitive, and it serves only to remind the donor class that their performative virtues are still being logged by the celestial HR department.

On the opposing side of this aesthetic abyss, we find the reactionary doodles that function as visual comfort food for the perpetually aggrieved. Here, the world is a dark, conspiratorial landscape where every shadow is a socialist plot and every social program is a personal affront to the ghost of George Washington. These artists specialize in drawing their heroes with chiseled jaws they never possessed and their enemies with physiological deformities that would make a Victorian surgeon weep. It is a world of pure id, where the complexity of global economics is reduced to a drawing of a fat man in a top hat stealing a sandwich from a crying baby. It is intellectually insulting, yet it is the primary fuel for a base that views reading more than two consecutive sentences as an elitist affectation.

What these cartoons truly capture, however, is not the 'foibles' of our leaders, but the absolute exhaustion of our political imagination. We are trapped in a loop of recycled iconography. The elephant and the donkey have become the gargoyles of our decaying cathedral—meaningless symbols that we continue to polish while the roof collapses. Wuerker’s compilation claims to show how these artists 'entertain and enrage,' but that is a generous interpretation. They actually provide a safe space for people to feel an emotion without having to do the heavy lifting of thinking. To be enraged by a cartoon is the lowest form of civic engagement. It is the political equivalent of shouting at a thunderstorm; it changes nothing, but it makes the loud person feel like they’ve participated in the weather.

The 'hypocrisies' highlighted in these ink blots are so well-documented they’ve become architectural features of the landscape. We know the Left is performative; we know the Right is a grift. The cartoonist simply underlines these facts with a Sharpie, as if pointing at a dumpster fire and shouting 'Fire!' constitutes a profound revelation. There is a parasitic relationship between the politician and the cartoonist. The politician provides the absurdity, and the cartoonist provides the validation of that absurdity. Without the grotesque incompetence of our elected officials, these illustrators would be forced to find real jobs, perhaps designing logos for artisanal water companies or drawing caricatures at the weddings of people they despise.

As we look back through these 'eyes of the cartoonists,' we aren't seeing a reflection of the truth; we are seeing the curated hallucinations of a society that has given up on reality. We prefer the caricature because the reality is too bleak to admit. It is easier to laugh at a drawing of a sinking ship than it is to acknowledge that we are currently treading water in the middle of a literal ocean of our own stupidity. These cartoons are the visual white noise of a collapsing empire—a way to fill the silence while we wait for the inevitable. So, by all means, flip through the gallery. Enjoy the clever metaphors and the exaggerated noses. Just don't mistake these doodles for a diagnosis. They are merely the graffiti on the walls of the hospice.