The fall of Aleppo comes as a suitably awful finale to what's been a pretty wretched 12 months. Assad's victory epitomises, in a sense, the reactionary tide prevailing just about everywhere in this, the Year of the Donald.
The hopes raised during the Arab Spring have, it seems, been crushed, with the Syrian regime consolidating its grip over a nation it has oppressed for so long.
Yet Aleppo also illustrates how little the Right's victories have actually settled. Russian military assistance might have enabled the government to recapture the city. But Assad's no closer to articulating any substantive basis for renewed hegemony in Syria.
The democracy campaign of 2011 emerged in response to poverty and brutal oppression. Assad's violence intensified both, so much so that the Syrian economy (like the nation itself) lies in ruins, while the sectarian divisions fanned by the regime remain entirely unresolved. One war might be coming to an end. But that doesn't mean peace — or even anything like stability.
Something similar might be said about the United States. Because Donald Trump's victory wrong-footed so many pundits, it's easy to lose perspective on precisely what he's achieved.
Yes, in 2017, the White House will be home to one of the more odious political personalities of recent times: a man who presents almost as a parody of the Ugly American. Yes, the new administration will be a rogues' gallery of shonks and bigots, with Trump evidently determined to employ every climate denier, Islamophobe and conman populating the fringes of American conservatism.
Nonetheless, Trump faces an array of problems, serious enough to put real limits on what he might do. As the slow process of counting the 2016 election continues, it's becoming increasingly clear how limited the support base for Trumpism actually is.
On raw numbers, Trump massively lost to Clinton, who now seems to have outpolled him by several million votes. In a context where nearly half of Americans didn't even turn up to the booths, that makes Trump — even before he takes office — one of the more loathed presidents of recent years.
"For every fundamentalist who thinks the new president will restore Christian values, there's a libertarian who hails the Donald as an advocate of unbridled self expression."
Furthermore, Trump lacks the kind of hard ideological nucleus that traditionally has allowed leaders to crash through an initial unpopularity. Think of Margaret Thatcher and her unbending insistence on class war against the unions. Think