Adieu to You, Twenty-Sixteen

            If nothing else, 2016 has been the year of the unexpected. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series after a 108-year losing streak. It was the year that the man who received fallatio from Marla Maples in the back of a helicopter 25 years ago, became President of the United States. It was a year that robbed us, like an assassin, of icon after icon and those we never thought were icons until they were gone. 2016 was a year that brought dread to optimists and idealists the world over, and served us coldblooded cynics exactly what we wanted… cold.

           

And vandalizing art museums would never be the same again.

           2016 did, however, expose the truth. Truth that we usually bury under pleasantry and politeness if we behave ourselves. Truth that we mask in the vein of pretending to be tolerant and enlightened. The gift of 2016 is that we now know our own mettle. Many of us have learned that the we’re not measured by our wins or loses, but by how we accept them and carry on. We have not measured well. 2016 exposed the charlatans, the hucksters, the skunks, and the blowhards. And after all of the Twitter battles and Facebook skirmishes, and riots within the walls of YouTube, and desperate shrieks of pride and resentment at places like coffee shops and parks, and carnages big and small, we all get to glower bitterly at sodden, decaying potato fields like Irishmen who don’t know who to blame.

            The best thing you can say about 2016, is that we know who won… nobody.

We bid you Adieu, Twenty-Sixteen, and fond Bah Fangool.