Happy New Year?

The year 2016 was seen by many as a supremely rotten year. And in ways it was. America shocked itself and the world by electing its incoming disruptive president. Unseemly, demeaning and disturbing points of view were manifested by him and some of his supporters. Such mindsets were remarkable because of their widespread geo-socio-economic nature. These prejudices somehow, alarmingly, have exceeded their bigoted shelf life. 

A majority of Americans came to loathe 2016 partly because of the unwelcome surprises that came along as the year developed and revealed itself. It was a year that held much promise for them in the beginning. But by the end, the world had seemingly been turned upside down.

In contrast, 2017 holds no such sunny promise for these folks. The country's path has been determined, for better or worse, for the next four years. 2017 won't be considered as a pariah year that 2016 is now because the path is clearly set. The expectation of social progress has been diminished. The game is seen, ironically, as rigged.

But the world didn't really change much on November 9, 2016. The march towards enlightenment is not meant to be a smooth one. As our current president has said, "The path that this country has taken has never been a straight line. We zig and zag, and sometimes we move in ways that some people think is forward and others think is moving back."

We've been here before. Think about other Big Zigs and Zags like the Januarys of 1861, 1933, or 1969. On New Year's Day, 1941, John Steinbeck wrote as if it were today:

“Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded.”

“Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man.” 

Pretty good, that John Steinbeck...