Well this has probably been the worst year in recent memory.
On A Personal Level:
My grandfather passed away over the summer and I found myself saying things I never thought I would have. Things like "I don't want to stay for the whole funeral. I was there when they pulled the plug on him on that's more than several of my cousins can say." To put that into context I was just going to pay my respects to my grandmother and graciously then leave. Instead what happened was I was lined up with other family members and had to shake hands over three-hundred friends of the family including a couple dozen servicemen and fire fighters. To enter the parking lot you had to drive under two ladder truck with the American flag hanging between them. There were two chaplains who each had something to say, neither wishing to graciously step down as both had been tremendous friends with my grandfather. The only odd moment came when it was time for two military personnel to preform the flag ceremony. They were a man of color and a women which was presumable intentional, though that wasn't the odd part. He'd been cremated so there was no casket for the flag to be laid upon before hand, thus it was already folded... so a room of 300 plus people watched two military personal unfold a flag, then fold it back up again.
At the reception I had to face a grim realization. When I posted the details of my grandfather's funeral on Facebook it received 91 likes and an uncounted number of comments of support and condolences.. of whom only one person attended from my social circle. Oddly enough it was the one person who I made the above statement to. He saved me a seat and stayed with me the whole night. He took pictures of everything and even tried to get some of his friends to stop by.
On A Political Level:
Hopefully four years from now we'll be able to look back and laugh. You know, like that time the president made fun of cripples and grabbing women inappropriately. Not that Hillary Clinton was any prize. She offered nothing more than what Bernie Sanders wasn't offering in spade. And my friends were personally screwed over by the DNC for supporting Bernie and getting his name on the ballet. WHY they were even invited to Hillary's announcement celebration only to be kicked out by seat fillers simply because they went to use the rest room just shows how stupid political parties can get.
In a nut shell, no matter who the president is, they are virtually powerless to do anything without the Senate and House of Representatives under the control of the same political party. Even if Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic ticket and won the election, I don't believe for one second that he could have done half the stuff he promised he would do. Hillary Clinton may not have been perfect but at least the crap being said about her sounded like something that would happen to a politician.
I don't understand the E-mail controversy and hope not to. I know this sounds odd but I really don't care about the content of her E-mails. The fact that her E-mails were able to be leaked in the first place is the Red Flag that makes her unfit to be president. Whether it was just spam she was receiving or the nuclear launch codes, this shouldn't be getting out there. On the other hand though I was hearing people saying things like "She is directly responsible for the deaths of ...." however many people died. No, that would be like saying anyone who gets hacked is directly funding terrorism.
Anyway the election is over and Donald Trump is president which may or may not have been because Russia hacked the system, or maybe more likely Facebook algorithms keep people trapped inside of social network vacuums. Now that the election is over it's WAY more apparent to me. All the people who were writing those articles to push the buttons of people to get them to click their articles didn't know how to write actual news so they're still harping on the same old issues. I've made it a habit to remove these sources from my Facebook feed. It's really odd turning on CNN and hearing them report on Trump saying something that actually sounded like he'd make a great leader, instead of articles saying what he Tweeted at 4:00am.
Lastly, it was made clear to me that that gun ownership is a religion and I will treat it as such in the future.