Jon Swift Roundup 2025

(The Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves)

( A Jon Swift picture.)

Welcome to the 2025 edition. It's been a long and eventful year, full of civil rights abuses, corruption and other skullduggery, but also some bright spots. It's nice to connect with others a bit and compare notes.

This tradition was started by the late Jon Swift/Al Weisel, who left behind some excellent satire, but was also a nice guy and a strong supporter of small blogs.

The late Lance Mannion provided the definitive description of our endeavor, which I've been repeating every year:

Our late and much missed comrade in blogging, journalist and writer Al Weisel, revered and admired across the bandwidth as the "reasonable conservative" blogger Modest Jon Swift, was a champion of the lesser known and little known bloggers working tirelessly in the shadows . . .

One of his projects was a year-end Blogger Round Up. Al/Jon asked bloggers far and wide, famous and in- and not at all, to submit a link to their favorite post of the past twelve months and then he sorted, compiled, blurbed, hyperlinked and posted them on his popular blog. His round-ups presented readers with a huge banquet table of links to work many of has had missed the first time around and brought those bloggers traffic and, more important, new readers they wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed.

It may not have been the most heroic endeavor, but it was kind and generous and a lot of us owe our continued presence in the blogging biz to Al.

Here's Jon/Al's massive 2007 and 2008 editions (via the Wayback Machine). Meanwhile, our more modest revivals from 2010–2024 can be found here.

If you're not familiar with Al Weisel's work as Jon Swift, his site (via the links above or the Wayback Machine if they're not working) features a "best of" list in the left column.

Thanks to all the participants, and apologies to anyone I missed. (I'd like expand our numbers again, but many bloggers don't list contact information.) You still can join in, by linking your post in the comments. Whether your post appears in the modest list below or not, feel free to promote your best post with the hatchtag #jonswift2025.

As in Jon/Al's 2008 roundup, submissions are listed roughly in the order they were received. As he wrote in that post:

I'm sure you'll be interested in seeing what your favorite bloggers think were their best posts of the year, but be sure to also visit some blogs you've never read before and leave a nice comment if you like what you see or, if you must, a polite demurral if you do not.

Without further ado:

Show Me Progress
Patriot demonstration in Sedalia, Missouri – July 4, 2025"
Michael Bersin: "Images from a streetside anti-Fascist demonstration along the main drag in Sedalia, Missouri on the 4th of July."

Bark Bark Woof Woof
"World AIDS Day"
Mustang Bobby: "Although great advances have been made in the treatment of HIV and AIDS, the loss of loved ones is still with us. I wrote a play, "Here’s Hoping," in 1994 for World AIDS Day and it still resonates."

Mad Kane's Political Madness
"Peace-Loving Trump"
Madeleine Begun Kane: "My post includes a two-verse limerick and a haiku, both of which mock Trump's yearning for the Nobel Peace Prize and his delight in receiving the make-believe FIFA Consolation 'Peace Prize.' "

Darwinfish²
"The Hacky Habits of News Aggregators and I Can’t Even"
Bluzdude: "The common irritating tricks, tics, and misdirections used by news link sites."

You Might Notice a Trend
"The Isolation"
Paul Wartenberg: "What trump is doing is the standard practice of an abusive gaslighting narcissist – any cult leader – does in all relationships: he's enforcing his will on other people to make them reliant on himself and to any belief system he imposes. He's cutting us off from friends and families who are warning us of the dangers, who could provide sanctuary or rescue and end his control of us..."

Mock Paper Scissors
"Case Study: In Your Guts, You Know He’s Nuts"
Tengrain: "The intersection of Artificial Intelligence and genuine stupidity as AI diagnoses Prznint Stupid’s rants. Be sure to read the funny, on-point comments from the Scissorheads, the internet’s band of incorrigible spitballers."

Just an Earthbound Misfit, I
"Mafia Nation (ETA: Indiana's Response)"
Comrade Misfit: "Trump tries to run a Mafia-style protection racket on Indiana Republicans. They grew a spine and told him to fuck off."

Constant Commoner
"Nobodies of the World, Unite!"
Ramona Grigg: "In celebration of the millions of nobodies who came together all across the land and made good noise, good trouble. Think Frodo and Samwise. They didn't think they could do it, either."

The Professional Left Podcast
"Ep. 942: What Is Effective Protest?"
Blue Gal: 'This was our #1 on YouTube. I would suggest it anyway given it has a No Kings theme.'

driftglass
"An Ode To The Low-Information Voter"
driftglass: "Written on Inauguration Day 2025, this was an ode to some of the people who helped re-elect the worst president in American history."

The Rectification of Names
"Farces All the Way Back"
Yastreblyansky: "In the aesthetics of right-wing dictatorship, maybe the first time was something of a farce too. Notes from August on, among others, Marx, God, Napoleon, the economist Stephen Moore, and Mr. Magoo."

Lotus – Surviving a Dark TimeBLOG NAME
"Remigration – the one word to rule them all"
LarryE (whoviating): "The entire anti-immigration program of the Trump regime can be summed up in one word: "remigration," the forcing of anyone considered "undesirable" to "go back to where they came from" – even if that could be generations back."

The Debate Link
"Trump's (Dis)order Gamble"
David Schraub: "The Trump administration is creating disorder in the hopes that voters will flee to the "party of order". But it is rare that a widespread sense of chaos, fear, and uncertainty benefits the ruling party."

Infidel753
"The empire of shriveled souls"
Infidel753: "Why is our country's political and corporate leadership so full of mediocrities? Because the incentives and type of work involved mostly attract emotionally-stunted trolls obsessed with accumulating money and power. Such roles don't appeal to our best minds, who mostly go into the sciences, arts, and academia instead. But today even those fields are increasingly under the sway of the shriveled souls who reign over politics and business, stultifying our culture and progress."

annieasksyou
Signal's Crossed, Emoji-Texting Protectors (An Acrostic Commemorating a Historic National Security Snafu)
Annie: "As America's inept and corrupt national security gang continue to both amuse and alarm us, I offer the acrostic I composed when we first saw their scary bumbling."

First Draft
"Birdbrain Of Alcatraz"
Peter Adrastos Athas: "Convicted felon orders reopening of infamous prison 62 years after it closed."

Nan's Notebook
"Bull-Poppy"
Nan: "The mystery of the interstellar comet 31/ATLAS cultivates the ideology of space visitors."

Perrspectives
"Munich II: Trump Begins the U.S. Betrayal of Ukraine"
Jon Perr: "If Washington’s betrayal of Kyiv sounds eerily familiar, it should. Just swap 1938 for 2025, Czechoslovakia for Ukraine, Hitler for Putin, Germany for Russia, and Neville Chamberlain for Donald Trump."

The Rude Pundit
"There Is No "America" Without Birthright Citizenship"
Lee Papa: "We are not the United States without immigrants and their children. Without birthright citizenship, we are just some bullshit group of colonizers inbreeding until we die out."

Crazy Eddie's Motie News
" 'Weathered' explains 'This Is EXACTLY How Much Poorer Climate Change Will Make Every Person on Earth'
Pinku-Sensei (Vince Lamb): "Most read post of 2025 with 1383 page views, thanks in part to Steve in Manhattan sharing the link at Crooks and Liars."

God's Spies
"A Palantir Primer: Tools for the Muscular State"
Thomas Neuburger: "We're at a tipping point. Just as the climate crisis has accelerated, so has the political one. Whatever dystopian agenda next plays out, the spook state will not go away. Welcome to why not to live here."

Left Jabs
"Zohran Mamdani is Not Coming to Eat Your Children"
LeftJabber: "Let’s remember that it was the Mamdani campaign that launched the word "affordability" all the way back in June. This post looks at the hysteria that surrounded his meteoric rise."

Strangely Blogged
"It's Especially NOT Funny Because It's True"
Vixen Strangely: "MAGAs support the worst possible person as president because they are the worst possible people and simply don't care about reality if it interferes with their vibes."

This Is So Gay
"Making the Homosexual More Modern and Relatable; or, Let's Go, Brandan!"
Duncan Mitchel: "I'm a gay atheist, and I've been following gay Christian apologetic for half a century now. It goes through phases; here's the latest one."

Bluestem Prairie
"Ah! Nostalgia! Draz's retirement announcement prompts walk down memory lane"
Sally Jo Sorensen: "A look back at the provocative legislative career of Minnesota's Steve Drazkowski, who never met a hungry person in Minnesota."

Roy Edroso Breaks It Down
"Notes from POTUS for Production of Rush Hour IV"
Roy Edroso: " More than one observer has mentioned that Trump's real dream of power was never politics but rather movie moguldom. And now that he's trying to put it over with him new Hollywood friends, his script doctoring has the same characteristics as his presidency: Crude, stupid, and hilarious."

Vagabond Scholar
"Dick Cheney and the Dark Side"
Batocchio: "Dick Cheney, who died in November, was by far the most powerful U.S. Vice President in history, and not coincidentally, was one of the Americans who most harmed the United States (and the world) in living memory."

Thanks again, folks. Happy blogging and everything else in 2026.