It’s December y’all.  Which means The Great Dumpster Fire that is 2016 is almost over, and in that we can find some solace.  Although, for everyone hoping 2017 is the bright light at the end of the tunnel, it seems much more likely that it’s just the headlight of the oncoming train.

The last few months have been fairly light on content on my blog; I could complain about an increase in my workload, or other projects.  About the merry-go-round of illness that my little family has been on, or about moving and interviews and all the other parts of life that make it conveinent to not work.

And while those are all reasons that I haven’t been posting, they aren’t the reason.  I haven’t posted because I haven’t felt able to.  The time just doesn’t seem right for the normal fictional drivel that I post.  And the articles that I want to write, just end up bumming me out to an unhealthy degree.

My general malaise isn’t because of Trump and his (so far) clown car of choices for cabinet positions.  It isn’t Brexit and the gaining of power for UKIP in the United Kingdom, or the general rise of far-right parties in Europe.  In fact, it isn’t because of politics at all.

Or rather, it isn’t because of Politics, with a capital P.  It is because of society in general, and American society in particular.  It’s the rise of Fake News, and memes.  It’s the lack of civil discourse and debate.  The demise of critical thinking and objective reasoning.  The rise of “belief” over “fact”.

There is no ability to have a discussion about the problems in this country and in this world.  We can’t talk about guns, we can’t talk about climate change, we can’t talk about regulations for companies or the environment or income inequality.  We can’t talk about racism or sexism or ageism or idiocracy.  One side is absolutely right, and the other absolutely wrong.  Both sides are to blame for this; the left clings to its ideals just as much as the right.  Their religion of righteousness forces them to hold hardline positions of opposition, and any sense of compromise is a sign of weakness.  But bipartisanship has not always been a dirty word.

The solutions to these problems are not easy or quick.  We need to find ways of working together.  We need to find ways of having civil discourse at a local level.  We need to encourage our elected officials, on both sides and at all levels, to be civil in their remarks and in their deeds.  We need to use critical and objective reasoning in our lives to seperate fact from fiction.  But most of all, we need to stop and think.  We need to not react.  We need to reason and discuss.

But really, we just need 2017 to be better.  Because I don’t think any of us can take another year like this one.

Be safe my friends, and Happy New Year.