Viewed in a bemused spirit, 2024 provided (in Mark Twain’s words) “not merely food for laughter,” but “an entire banquet.” Begin with the Texan who, preparing to run for president, changed his name to Literally Anybody Else. John F. Kerry, the Democrats’ 2004 nominee and, in 2024, the State Department’s designated climate worrier, said people would “feel better” about the war in Ukraine if Russia would “make a greater effort to reduce emissions.” War criminals should minimize their carbon footprints.

A whistleblower charged that a federal supervisor directed workers responding to hurricanes Helene and Milton to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” Miss Sassy, the Springfield, Ohio, cat who police were told might have tempted hungry Haitian immigrants, was found healthy in her owner’s basement. Online applicants for some positions in Kamala Harris’s campaign were invited to say whether they are “he/him,” “she/her,” “they/them,” “xe/xem,” “ze/hir,” “ey/em,” “hir/hir,” “fae/faer” or “hu/hu.” At a post-election seminar, a senior official of the campaign pronounced it “flawless.” The day after the election, various universities provided milk, cookies, coloring books, Legos, “reflection spaces” and “destress sessions” for young adults “struggling” with the election results.

A Page 1 New York Times headline announced a discovery: “Progressive Ideals Losing a Grip on the Country.” The story did not disclose when the country was in this grip. Rwanda, unlike America, evidently is not polarized: Paul Kagame, president since 2000, won reelection with 99.18% of the vote. South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi L. Noem, asked about her memoir claiming that she had once met with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, said this “anecdote” has since been “adjusted.”

In 2024, the ersatz religion of “diversity, equity and inclusion” emitted a long, withdrawing whimper. Many corporations reconsidered the employee indoctrination and racial spoils system dictated by DEI orthodoxy. Even academia, always the last to learn, awakened to the obvious: Wokeness, including mandatory statements of DEI groveling by faculty applicants, is incompatible with intellectual freedom. A federal judge handling litigation concerning the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets that killed 346 people was unamused by the Justice Department’s “diversity and equity” provisions when choosing the monitor of Boeing’s compliance with its plea deal. Eighty-four percent of San Francisco voters supported restoring algebra to middle schools, it having been banished to serve “equity.” A Virginia school district paid $575,000 recompense to a teacher fired for mis-pronouning. When New Jersey region experienced an earthquake, the Green Party candidate for Senate in New Jersey said: “We never get earthquakes. The climate crisis is real.”

Illinois’ legislature passed a bill renaming some “offenders” as “justice-impacted individuals.” Five crime-busting Mississippi cops arrested a 10-year-old for peeing behind his mother’s car. He was sentenced to three months’ probation, with drug tests at his probation officer’s discretion. Embracing today’s rule “Never miss an opportunity to criminalize something,” an Ohio legislator, incensed not by the rioters but by their excuse for rioting, proposed legislation making it a felony to plant a visiting team’s flag at the center of Ohio State’s football field. Elsewhere in education, Chicago’s teachers unions pronounced it “misogynistic” to report that 4 in 10 Chicago public school teachers were “chronically absent.”

Brooklyn’s PS 261, where the “Arab Cultural Arts” program is funded by Qatar, had a map of the Middle East with Israel omitted. An Amnesty International report this year began: “On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive …” One wonders why. The New York Times reported that on Oct. 9, 2023, “senior administrators at Harvard University” removed the word “violent” from the description of Hamas’s attacks because a dean explained that it “sounded like assigning blame.”

In Bolivar, Missouri, Bill Pool, who was born when his father was 80, will turn 100 in January. Bill, reportedly the last living son of a Civil War veteran, survived 2024, perhaps laughing all the way.

George Will’s email address is georgewill@washpost.com.