Time away, especially following a noisy election, can be good for the soul. Moreover, such breaks can offer perspective and make the debates that fill our days seem rather small and narrow.

Consider that southeast Asia, only a sliver of that massive continent, comprises nearly 700 million people. That is a population more than double that of the United States. Add in the rest of Asia, including the behemoths of China and India, and you count over 60 percent of earth’s humans.

In a few weeks of travel across Cambodia and Vietnam, we heard nary a word about furries. Not a single person we encountered seemed the slightest bit concerned about the latest conspiratorial rantings of Joe Oltmann.

What occupies our time and attention is not always of broader consequence. In that sense, perhaps, one of the lessons of travel is that of humility.

Though still in the fog of all-too-real jet lag, we are back in time for the holidays and the windup of the year. Whether that fog augments or impedes clarity, you can decide. But let’s take stock of these past twelve months – a year, all things considered, that could have been worse.

All told, it was a better year for democracy than the prior annum or two. Even if those predecessor years set a very low bar.

Despite the cacophony of hyperbole and denial from a cast of characters that has trouble reading basic election numbers, or more likely because of that never-ending, logic-defying clatter, voters looked past persistent inflation numbers and the president’s underwhelming poll numbers to reject the loud-mouths and keep the relative status quo in place.

Yes, Republicans took control of the U.S. House by the thinnest of margins. But in the run-up to the election, precisely no one defined “victory” for the GOP as a gain of maybe nine seats in the House, while actually subtracting one Senate seat.

All the while, very gettable governor’s chairs in key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona went by the wayside as Republicans opted for outside-the-box candidates when the electorate was firmly of the mind to paint inside the lines of democratic norms.

The likes of Kari Lake and Herschel Walker may have made for low-brow entertainment but voters seemed eager for more serious sorts.

Candidates for secretary of state – who claimed elections were rigged and with 2024 mischief on their minds – went down to ignoble defeat in several swing states.

It would be short-sighted naivete to regard American democracy as fully secured in response to the existential challenges with which all of us are all too familiar. Still, the state of our union is better at the end of 2022 than at the beginning.

In the final chapter of his career, Joe Biden found the perfect foe and foil in Donald Trump. Only Trump could have put Biden in the White House. Only Trump’s acolytes could have gifted Biden history-defying success in the mid-term elections, despite troubled times in many parts of the country and his own sagging ratings.

For years, Trump had shrugged off one incident after another, any one of which would have brought an abrupt end to a standard-issue political career. But at year’s end, Trump may be terminally tagged with the one label he most detests and that he cannot escape – that of loser.

His Mar-a-Lago dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes carried the distinct odor of someone more interested in mocking the political system than being a serious contestant. His flabbergasting statement about terminating the Constitution provided an exclamation point to his ownership of Jan. 6th.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene bragged that the insurrection of that date would have been far more successful had she and Steve Bannon been running the show. As Republican House leadership welcomed her back into their good graces and far too many in their ranks displayed only the most tepid interest in the whereabouts of their spine.

Inflation continued to tick along. The surest sign of its magnitude was the sense of welcome relief when a report this past week showed it slowing to a still formidable 7.1 percent.

Covid ticked along as well, though one would never know it based on the “what me worry” attitude of most in our ranks.

The Dobbs decision this past June, overturning 49 years under Roe, returned the ultimately divisive issue of abortion to the political sphere. Voters spoke and in states both red and blue made clear what they thought of strict prohibitionists.

It is almost as if the system worked. Imagine that.

An unfathomable ground war in Europe had the good guys winning and the bad guys on the run, even if a long, cold, winter slog lies ahead. The notion of an all-powerful Mother Russia lies in tatters. The azure and gold of the Ukrainian flag have become the colors of the civilized world.

As the year winds to a close, Elon Musk may be doing for Twitter what Sam Bankman-Fried did for the cryptocurrency industry. One can only hope.

Closer to Colorado home base, Lauren Boebert acts as if she heard an affirming mandate in her thinnest of victories in a comfortable district with a nine-point Republican advantage. Some in the GOP search for a return to relevancy while others seem determined to sink to an ever-deeper bottom.

After passing through impressive airports in Hanoi, Seoul and Seattle on our journey home, deplaning at Denver International Airport highlighted the depths to which the facility has fallen. Which, by extension, matches the struggling condition of the broader city.

A Stanley Cup for the Avs more than compensated for another season of ho-hum disappointment from Dick Monfort’s Rockies. That was only exceeded by the letdown of Denver’s donkey football team where the brain damage suffered by those on the field was almost matched by those in the stands.

To ring in the holidays, our junior senator and wife Robin brought home a baby boy to cuddle, nurture and raise. Hooray for reproductive technology. Welcome to this crazy, wonderful world, Jack Hickenlooper.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for Colorado Politics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at?EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann