Hello, and for the final time from me this year, happy Friday. Growing up, one of my favorite ways to mark the end of the year was to watch Google’s Year in Search. I loved how it always managed to include the biggest and most iconic moments of the year, and how seamlessly it captured its essence through our most-searched questions. I don’t remember exactly when or why I ultimately ditched the tradition—maybe the world became too big of a dumpster fire for me to enjoy it—but when I came across this year’s edition, I decided to watch it.
We don’t need Google to remind us how tough 2021 turned out to be. Despite all of the highs (the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, the reopening of travel, a new resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), 2021 also had its fair share of lows (an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, another year of the pandemic, that Greek alphabet lesson no one asked for). Personally, 2021 was probably one of the toughest years I’ve experienced in a while—one riddled with burnout and uncertainty about what comes next.
But I’d be remiss if I left out all of the great things that happened this year, too: I got vaccinated and was finally able to spend time with my family after nearly two years apart. I ran my third half marathon and every other 2020 race that got postponed by the pandemic. I spent a beautiful (and largely restriction-free) summer with friends and loved ones in the world’s best city. I wrote dozens of stories for America’s hottest magazine, mostly from my dining room table.
And, last but not least, I kept up this correspondence with all of you. To those of you who read, responded to, or shared this newsletter over the past year, I appreciate you. And as a way of saying thanks, I’ll be gifting a one-year Atlantic subscription to the first person who responds to this email with what they are most looking forward to in 2022. If that person is you, you’ll get an email from me sometime this weekend. If you don’t hear from me but would still like to support The Atlantic’s journalism, you can do so here. I’m biased, but I think it makes a pretty great gift 🎅
What I’ve written
To speak with Rana Ayyub, as I recently did, is to get a glimpse of what it means to be a journalist in a country that’s in democratic freefall. Hers is a story of what India is becoming, and of what it stands to lose.
To her detractors, Ayyub is nothing more than an activist defaming India’s image on the world stage. To her supporters, she is a rare voice speaking truth to power in a media environment prone to self-censorship. But Ayyub represents more than just a bellwether for press freedom in the country. As a journalist, a Muslim, and a vocal critic of the government’s Hindu-nationalist agenda, she represents many of the identities that are no longer tolerated in Modi’s India today. Keep reading here
For my final piece of the year, I wrote about President Biden’s Summit for Democracy, and why diplomacy alone won’t be able to save it.
Irrespective of which countries are involved in the summit or how highly they rank on the democratic scale, preventing and reversing global democratic erosion will not be easy for diplomacy to tackle on its own. Democratization is a process that usually takes place within countries, not among them. Some of the gravest threats to democracy are internal: distrust, polarization, voter suppression, and partisan institutions. Diplomatic pressure can encourage and promote more democratic practices, but it is not what drives democracy forward. Keep reading here
What I’ve read
This urgent warning about the future of American democracy, from an author who has been proven right before (The Atlantic)
The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.
Who or what will safeguard our constitutional order is not apparent today. It is not even apparent who will try. Democrats, big and small D, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders. They are making a grievous mistake.
This important essay about the structural imbalances that persist in international journalism (News Lines Magazine)
Of course, I was not going to get a staff job, I was not going to be called “correspondent,” and I was not going to be relocated anywhere. … Almost every day during those five years, I was painfully reminded that, no matter how hard I tried, I would not be regarded in the same way as foreign colleagues on the ground, notwithstanding their skills and experience, for they were not at fault for the structural flaws that stalled my professional development.
This excellent long read by my colleague Tom McTague on the scandal-plagued Boris Johnson, who has had quite the week (The Atlantic)
During my conversations with Johnson earlier in the year, we got on to which books he’d been reading. As well as the two James Shapiro books about Shakespeare, he told me he’d recently read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, which he described as being about a man who had all the superficial charm but threw away his success. Was he trying to tell me something?
What I’m thinking about
What to do with the three, blissful weeks of vacation ahead of me.
Until 2022,
Yasmeen