2016 really does feel like a lifetime ago. I was in Iceland, having just been to Berlin and we were enroute to Paris, the first time I had ever married anyone in Europe. It was a pretty epic trip. I remember landing in Hong Kong from Paris and everyone got phone service. It was like landing and finding out a national disaster had occured, but Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, “Closer,” by the Chainsmokers, was the country’s No. 1 song, as it had been since August. Not to read too much into that or anything, especially considering the duo’s troubling recent history of social distancing violations, but this lyrical snippet is standing out as pretty meaningful to me in 2020: “Four years, no calls/ Now you’re looking pretty in a hotel bar.” What if the thing looking pretty in the hotel bar … was democracy?

– Heather Schwedel in Slate