The Year Of Implosions

What can we say about the year just past? Kenzie Bryant, writing for Vanity Fair, is calling 2022 the year of implosions. In her article, she explains what she means by that:

An implosion can occur because the middle is hollow. There is no there there, and nothing can’t support something, so it’s all done in. Collapsed. It’s categorically different from an explosion—those take out everything around them. With an implosion, if anything was relying on the imploded thing for support, it too would topple. With enough of them, it adds up to a general atmosphere—a vibe even!—of broader social flimsiness.

She goes on to list and discuss the “best” ones, the ironic quotation marks being hers. I’ll briefly explain, but you can read what she says about them at the article:

The Spectacular Failure of FTX [Referring to Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto-currency company.]

Ticketmaster’s Big “Taylor Swift Eras Tour” Whoopsy [The ticket-selling monopoly implodes by being unable to handle the demand for tickets to a popular singer.]

Donald Trump’s Second Career as Kingmaker [She thinks he has lost his mojo.]

On Notice: Twitter [She thinks that, though the jury is still out, Elon Musk and Twitter are imploding.]

Liz Truss’s Prime Minister Sprint [The UK prime minister who quit after only 45 days.]

I think the writer is on to something, but I would add some more implosions of 2022, some of which are more significant:

The Russian military. [Once feared by all, but getting completely whipped on the battlefield by the Ukrainians.]

Vladimir Putin. [The textbook example of the “strong man” mode of government, the president of Russia is imploding before our eyes, due to the failure of his invasion of Ukraine. But we must beware: When a star implodes, it first gives off a burst of devastating energy, and then it becomes a black hole, dragging everything around it into annihilation. The man has nuclear weapons and, his back against the wall and wanting to go out in a vengeful blaze of glory, he might use them.]

The American conservative movement. [I’m not only referring to its failures in the midterm election. Many of its intellectuals are giving up on its long-time ideals of freedom, small government, and free market economics and are imploding into illiberalism, arguing for authoritarianism, big government, and state-controlled economics.]

College sports. [Broadscale conference re-alignment; big money for college athletes through name, image, and likeness deals; transfer portals destroying teams; universities using sports to keep their constituents distracted from what they are teaching in the classroom. College sports sever their ties to actual education and become just minor leagues for the pros.]

University Education. [Academic freedom has been replaced by cancellation, censorship, and thought policing. Education has been replaced by woke propaganda. Relativism has destroyed academic standards. This academic collapse is related to an institutional implosion. Right before a star implodes, it expands. Stanford has 16,937 students, but 18,038 employees: 15,750 administrators and 2,288 faculty. Like the Catholic index of prohibited books that must not be read, those administrators have published a 13-page index of prohibited words that must not be uttered at Stanford (including “American,” “immigrant,” and “stupid”). Meanwhile, the cost of going to Stanford has risen to $77,034 per year.

To be sure, there are exceptions. Lots of scientists and other scholars are doing good work despite it all. And some schools, especially Christian schools, are still keeping learning alive. But institutionally, which includes institutional values, universities are imploding.]

Your turn. What else has imploded during 2022? Churches? Celebrities? Corporations? Government? I’ll let you take it from here. . . .

Illustration: “Artist impression of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy” by ESO/L. Calçada, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons