My weekly articles in the Highland County Times-Gazette continued to be, for me, a diary of the times.

One of my articles this past year was titled “The Test of Our Times,” alluding to our challenges with Russia, China, Iran and the Middle East, along with authoritarian trends across the globe.

Vladimir Putin is testing our resolve to stand up to his aggression in northern Europe and testing our ability to thwart his nefarious undermining of our democracy. Xi Jinping is testing our resolve in global leadership and particularly in the Indo-Pacific. Iran and the axis of authoritarian nations threaten our ability to combat terrorism and to support geo-political stability across the globe. At home, a growing number of Americans seem to have come under a hypnotic stupor and fascination with authoritarian leadership.

On scale, the immigration problem is just the tip of the iceberg. The world is on the move. Going forward, as climate changes threaten large geographic domains, climate refugees will continue to try and find safe havens in which to live and raise families, challenging the stability, financial and cultural tolerances of safe-harbor nations.

Heading into the 2024 presidential election year, we have the candidacy of an aging incumbent, who has accomplished much legislatively and rebuilt our alliances around the globe; yet he suffers from an equally remarkable amount of age discrimination among many voters.

On the other side of the aisle, during the course of the year 2023, the Republican Party has seemingly morphed into the Trump Party. A quote from his Veterans Day tweet 2023 stands out as evidence of his attempts, by word of mouth, to define the state of our nation and himself.

“In honor of our great veterans on Veteran’s Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

This year Russia continued to prosecute its cruel assault on the sovereign nation of Ukraine and its people. The costs associated with support for Ukraine has become a political talking point for right-leaning conservatives, but not for the majority of Republicans and Democrats in Washington. However, the cost burden escalated when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, leading to strong support for Israel in its retaliation against Hamas. That support flickered as Israel’s military response became increasingly disproportional and well over 20,000 Palestinians died, most being women and children, some still buried under millions of tons of rubble. The year 2024 will hopefully see an end to the violence and some solution to the governance and control of Gaza.

Two other global things seemed prominent to me as the year unfolded. Xi Jinping has been channeling Mao Zedong, reverting to greater state control over means of production and society at a time when China’s economy has struggled. His obsession with being first among equals occurs simultaneously with a collapse of the real estate market in China, a dramatic weakening of the Chinese currency, and a regression in foreign-direct investment in China. Walking a dithering line of support for Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine hasn’t helped his drive for global leadership recognition.

Another prominent happening in 2023 was the initiative by the United States to help consummate a diplomatic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel which promised to reset alignments in the Middle East. As of this writing, the Israel-Hamas War quashed that effort, setting back the Middle East politically and strategically. Experts are suggesting that Hamas likely attacked Israel to kill the rapprochement at the behest of Iran.

All these disrupting events seem to have overtaken the sense of urgency regarding climate change. The annual end-of-year National Climate Assessment (NCA) reported that the United States, along with other higher latitude nations is experiencing more rapid global warming than most other areas of the world, more rapid than had been anticipated.

This year’s report dramatically laid out the costs of the escalating warming. “Back in the 1980s, a billion-dollar disaster hit the US once every four months on average (a figure that’s adjusted for inflation). Now, the US has to cope with one every three weeks. Those extreme events come with $150 billion in losses every year, according to the assessment.”

Polling consistently puts climate policy among the top three policy concerns among one third of Americans, but when it comes to immediate concerns attached to current elections it falls to 15th or 16th as the economy rises to the top. Why this paradox? When one goes to the grocery store or gas pump, the purse pain-in-the-pocket burns with immediacy. But when reflecting on the big issues of our times, climate seems to rise on our list of concerns. Climate policy will move higher when climate events are more connected to our purse. When tornadoes, floods or hurricanes wipe out our net worth, or when our seaside dream home loses 50% of its value, wildfires destroy our neighborhood, or we can no longer get insurance, squashing our ability to get a mortgage, priorities will change.

I think it’s fair to say that generative artificial intelligence made its astonishing, if not alarming, debut in 2023. One is left to wonder what AI may bring, and what calamities it will cause without controls.

Technology has been an accelerant in our interconnected world, globally, politically, economically, culturally and strategically from the standpoint of national security. Technology is monumental, instantaneous and unrelenting. How mankind comes to terms with it is another test of our times.

Writing weekly columns often feels like a Sisyphean task, yet I remain committed to the idea that the way for a nation and a community to deal with these churning problems is to be well informed. It’s what keeps me motivated to keep writing.

Bill Sims is a Hillsboro resident, retired president of the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, an author and runs a small farm in Berrysville with his wife. He is a former educator, executive and foundation president.