The two-faced Roman god Janus provides the derivation for “January”—a point in the calendar when we are challenged to take stock of the past year and think ahead for the coming one.
And 2016 was certainly a memorable year; however, are we to cite Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities, experiencing “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”? Or was 2016 more akin to the human tendency to describe every twist in the road of history as a major turning point?
Although we think that we can observe the past year with precision, it is more akin to viewing through a clouded window with myopic eyes and with our nose pressed against the glass.
We can certainly say that a lot of prominent people died. These included some from our historical, cultural past (Zsa Zsa Gabor, Nancy Reagan, and Elie Wiesel); a vicious dictator (Fidel Castro); sports icons (Muhammad Ali, Gordie Howe, and Arnold Palmer); a national space hero (John Glenn); a dominant Supreme Court judge (Anthony Scalia); and a gaggle of singers/composers, (David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, and George Michael). And within a day of each other, we lost “Tammy” (aka Debbie Reynolds) and the iconic Star Wars “Princess Leia” (aka Carrie Fisher).
And the thought of “Peace on Earth” was honored only in the breach. The reality of Syrian President Assad’s civil war victory became blatantly obvious with the fall of rebel-held Aleppo. Separately, the Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and its penchant for Islamic terrorist atrocities is cornered in almost its last bastion (Mosul) by an Iraqi/Kurdish Army (once more rebuilt by U.S. trainers) that seems to have learned to fight.
We can also note that two impossible things happened: The Chicago Cubs (after more than a century of futility) won the World Series. And Donald Trump is the 45th president-elect of the United States.
The latter has generated the most angst. Democrats anticipating the equivalent of four-year’s banqueting presided over by the first woman president now must anticipate four-years of consuming crow. And the cause? Defeat has a thousand finger-pointers: the constitutional strait-jacket of the Electoral College; the inadequacies of the Hillary Clinton candidacy; Russian “hackers”; FBI machinations; etc. Essentially, however, the Republican-oriented “mad as hell…” “deplorables” outmaneuvered the Democrat’s effort to construct a majority from minorities.
But what does this auger for 2017?
The worst-case scenario depicts President Trump as a bull carrying his own china shop, ricocheting from disaster to disaster.
