by Kitty Testa
So you think 2016 was the worst year ever? In a global sense, I would nominate almost any year in the 20th century as being far worse than 2016. Over that 100-year span, approximately 200 million people were killed from war, deliberate famines and pogroms, and over 800 million perished in epidemics.
Yet, since most of us missed most of the catastrophe in that century, and best and worst are relative terms, many are ringing out the old year with relish. Surely a “Good Riddance 2106” meme has popped up on your Facebook feed within the past few days. Yes, some bad things have happened this year, but we’ve all heard that every cloud has a silver lining. Whether you believe that or not, good often comes out of bad.
Here are some of the things that have made 2016 an awful year for many, but show us that some clouds, at least, do have silver linings.
1. Celebrity Deaths
The year seemed to start off with the death of David Bowie on January 10, followed by the death of Alan Rickman just four days later, and Glenn Frey four days after that. By the end of March, we’d lost Nancy Reagan, George Martin, Keith Emerson and Patty Duke, among others. Merle Haggard, Prince, Muhammad Ali would follow. RIP, Leon Russell, whom I considered my piano teacher. And if we make it through today without another celebrity death, the deaths this past week of George Michael, followed by the passing of Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, just one later, will be the caboose on this sad train of 2016.
Yes, many celebrities died. While sometimes I worry that our culture is obsessed with celebrities, I understand how they seem to be intimately a part of our lives through music that evokes our memories, movies that engage us and books that rock our world views. While we weren’t flame-throwing and shade-casting at one another over politics this year, we were mourning together, not just for the celebrities themselves, but for a shared past that included them. When we shared our memories and admiration for those lost, the election briefly took a back seat. When Gene Wilder died we were too busy watching Willy Wonka to be mean for a few hours, and when Leonard Cohen died, we sang Hallelujah together.
2. “What is Aleppo?”
When asked what he would do about Aleppo in early September, Johnson asked, “What is Aleppo?”
This might have been Gary Johnson’s worst moment in the 2016 election, but the desire to ridicule Johnson increased awareness of the conflict in Syria’s largest city that had been raging over four years. Suddenly the horrors of the war in Syria suddenly moved to the front burner, as well as knowledge that Russia had become involved in the Syrian civil war a year earlier. This past month there have been social media postings from civilians trapped in Aleppo begging for help from the outside world (although some are suspicious that some maintain that this is a propaganda campaign). This increased pressure on Obama’s administration to “do something” about Aleppo. Just as John Kerry was to announce a new plan to end hostilities, Russia and Turkey brokered a ceasefire within the past few days. One must suspect that Russia’s efforts are, in part, motivated by a desire to show-up the Obama administration, but if they are successful, it will, at the very least, bring a hiatus from violence for the innocents in the crossfire.
3. Donald Trump Elected President
OK, some people think this is a great thing, no doubt, but for those who don’t, they are finally “woke” to the incredible powers that have accrued to the executive branch over the past twelve years, but particularly during Obama’s term as president.
Those who loved it when Obama said, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” surely realize that Donald Trump also has a pen and also has a phone. (Someone, please! Please take it away! At least delete his Twitter app!)
Congress has abdicated much of its constitutional authority, especially over foreign policy and war, to the executive branch. Obama has acted cavalierly in his drone assassination program and destabilization and regime change efforts. Attempts by Congress to provide oversight have been ridiculed by Obama’s minions as witch hunts, as they seemingly do not understand Congress’s role in checking the power of presidential authority.
More than that, Obama has used the executive branch to set labor policies, healthcare policies and to execute schemes like Fast and Furious.
Our president is not supposed to be a monarch. The silver lining here—even if you are a never-Trumper—is that some of this excess power is likely to be clawed back. We know that had Hillary Clinton won this election, executive powers would continue to grow, and we now should see strong support for restoring the balance of equal, separate powers.
4. Brexit
Some believe that Britain’s vote to exit the European Union is devastating and illustrative of the kind of nationalism that ultimately leads to war, and others hold that it is a triumph for national self-determination in the face of unresponsive bureaucracy. They may both be right.
Some warned of dire economic ramifications of Great Britain’s move, but even short term effects were surprising. The stock market initially tanked, but then rebounded through the year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average flirting with the 20,000 mark in the past few weeks. Predicting long term economic conditions is nearly impossible. Nobody knows exactly how Brexit will affect the economic future, or even if it will have much effect at all.
Brexit is important because it is a challenge to centralized power. Centralized power reduces liberty, and also reduces the ability to experiment with solutions to social problems. When efforts to solve problems are strangled by bureaucratic red tape, fewer solutions will be tried. Surely many solutions will fail, but small-scale failures are less damaging than large-scale failures.
Brexit is also a reminder that we have overreaching federal power in the US, power that dictates state and local policy, often using federal funding as both a carrot and a stick. When the federal government wants the states to toe the line on policy, it simply threatens to revoke funding. It’s not the way our governmental structure is supposed to work, and if the federal government doesn’t keep this in check, we may well be looking at a Texit, a Michigone or a Kansescape one of these days.
5. Fake News
As Obama and the mainstream media howl about the existence of Fake News—especially on social media—they have opened the door to criticism of their own fake news. While several websites deliberately distribute fabricated news through Facebook and Twitter, it is noted that it was the professional media that brought us the reports of Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction that resulted in seemingly incessant war. It has been the professional media that fed us slanted reporting by journalists clearly supportive of Hillary Clinton during the election. In the most recent example, the well-respected publication, The Guardian, mischaracterized an interview with Julian Assange to generate a hit piece on the WikiLeaks founder.
Alternative media is on the rise because the professional media abandoned journalism and much of the population—rightly so—no longer trusts them. What we are witnessing is the democratization of news. The citizen journalist enjoys the same First Amendment protections afforded to the professional journalists—at least for now.
Although Facebook initially responded to Fake News complaints by observing that this is a very small portion of news stories shared on its platform, it has now decided to partner with the very media outlets that have falsely hyped fake news as a problem in the first place. These efforts could greatly curtail freedom of speech.
Alex Jones, to many the face of Fake News, has threatened to hit Facebook with a class action suit over their new policy to reign in Fake News. Love him or hate him, he has the means to wage the war, and if he does go forward, we may find that this is necessary to preserve First Amendment rights for all.