2016: It Was Huge!

As expected, 2016 went out just as it started, not with a bang, but with a tweet. From his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, President-elect Trump launched one final 2016 salvo at his political rivals, wishing his “enemies” a Happy New Year with all the sincerity of a Russian eCard.

The year began well enough. Alabama won the College Football National Championship for the ninety-seventh time, and after the game Nick Saban told everyone to go to hell. The Mexican marines managed to plug up some holes and capture El Chapo, and we were treated to at least two originally entertaining movies in Deadpool and Zootopia. We collectively ignored the warning signs, happily engaged in the absurdity of the early presidential campaign while brushing aside the unwatchable Zoolander 2 and barely acknowledging the dwindling roster of Republican candidates not named Trump.

By March, the signs of divisiveness were clearly evident, ushered in, by of all things, the Academy Awards. The #OscarsSoWhite movement was a harbinger of the widening disconnect between the whiny, intellectually smug, liberal elites, and the fear-mongering, ultra-conservative, xenophobic right. The fact that ninety-five percent of the country’s population resides tremulously in the middle made little difference to the hysterical media, which walked the Oscar red carpet in Chicken Little’s finest, breathlessly pitting millionaire African-Americans against millionaire whites, while glossing over the true diversity of the proceedings, which included winners from Mexico, England, Hungary, Australia, Italy, and Sweden. We were also supposed to ignore the black host, black musical director and black President of the Academy, as they didn’t fit the narrative.

In June, fifty-two percent of voters in Great Britain elected to withdraw from the European Union. The “Brexit” referendum was remarkable not only for its political and economic ramifications, but because not a singe pollster or news outlet saw it coming. The disconnect between the liberally biased media and the conservative, “silent” majority was clearly visible across the pond, but in the colonies, Democratic mouthpieces at CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times (among others) declared the U.S. election over, and eagerly awaited the coronation of Hillary Clinton at the upcoming convention. Meanwhile, Trump’s nomination was treated with the reverence of a Brittney Spears concert. While commentators struggled to control their sardonic chuckles and rolling eyeballs, no one seemed to notice that the highest rated programs on television were either moronic reality shows or football, and the highest-grossing movies of the summer all centered around buffed-out heroes in tights destroying large sections of Midtown Manhattan. Like Edwardian aristocrats, the very people who brought us this elevated fair, continued to host His Royal Highness Bill Clinton at their $100,000-a-plate soirees, deaf to the growing discontent of the Middle-American consumers who built their mansions one ticket at a time.

By the end of the summer, the news that Hillary Clinton was operating a “pay-to-play” racket out of her State Department office was overshadowed by a group of U.S. Olympic swimmers peeing on a wall. In the meantime, Trump continued to be, well, Trump, joining Ryan Lochte in a tango of misdirection and half-truths that exhibited all the artfulness of a rodeo clown. Speaking of clowns…as predicted in Revelations, trick-or-treaters across the nation braced themselves for an apocalyptic invasion of masked jokers, while the very real and important issue of urban violence and police profiling was hijacked by a second-string quarterback in a Fidel Castro t-shirt. Racial tensions continued to mount and naturally the media looked for guidance, not from the African-American President of the United States, but from Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

As the election drew near, political coverage reluctantly turned from Donald Trump’s hand size, and what he may or may not have done with those hands, to whether Mr. Trump would accept his inevitable landslide defeat or secede from the Union. Hillary Clinton, certain of victory, slipped into a prevent defense, plastering a rather painful looking smile onto her glum face, while both parties debated whether FBI Director James Comey should be hanged or canonized, depending on the week. In a race to be first, all of the major news outlets not containing the letters FOX proclaimed Hillary Clinton the winner hours before the first polls opened. They then spent the balance of the day poking and swiping at complicated looking computer screens, excitedly explaining how three undecided hobos traveling on a boxcar in western Pennsylvania could decide the entire election.

And then the world came to an end. The Cubs won the World Series! Oh, and Donald Trump was elected President. Over the month-long mourning period, tearful liberals took to the streets, highlighting their monopoly on enlightened tolerance by mocking the intelligence of the fifty-percent or so of the country who disagreed with their position. Thankfully, like all children, liberals quickly lost focus, and by December, Hillary Clinton had already been replaced in the public consciousness by Newt Scamander and Jyn Erso. As Mariah Carey flubbed us into 2017, we were all cheered by the prospects of a new and better year.

#rants