As 2021 comes to an unlamented end, we ask ourselves what it proved. What, if anything, did we learn?

• The rapid, precipitous, poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan left 13 Americans dead, hundreds stranded behind enemy lines, Afghanistan subject to the tender mercies of the Taliban, women forbidden to get an education, girls beheaded for playing soccer, and America’s reputation in tatters as we show the world that it’s more dangerous to be our friend than our enemy.

• Ever increasing, draconian lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates demoralize and impoverish people, close businesses, impair education, and set back children a whole year – a big part of their young lives.

• Backed by the excuse of Black Lives Matter, riots and looting wrack blue cities, while Soros-funded DAs install revolving doors on jails to make the chaos worse, and police are defunded and demoralized.

• Wide-open borders admit an uncounted flood of unidentified immigrants, without the masks and vaccines legal immigrants require, while drug runners and human traffickers ply their trades with broad smiles.

• Congress spends money we don’t have on things we don’t need, putting drunken sailors to shame, while the Fed prints money until the only fear is that the ink supply will be exhausted.

• More phony money means higher prices for fuel and food, but wealthy leftists yawn in indifference while the working class and minorities struggle to put food on the table and heat their homes.

I could go on, but you get the point. Only diehard leftists can deny that we are headed full-speed in the wrong direction. So what, if anything, have we learned? Whose policies were vindicated? Whose ideas were justified by the dismal results of doing the opposite? Whose excessively strong personality looks better in the light of the excessively weak personality of our current leader? You thought things couldn’t get worse? Man, were you wrong.