Since we are running out of 2015 (thank heavens), it’s time for the tradition that goes back three decades, That Was the Year That Was 2015, the title of which is borrowed from …

It’s too bad the British satire “That Was the Week That Was,” which starred David Frost and Roy Kinnear, doesn’t exist anymore. Much of 2015 would fit into the satire realm were it not for the fact that 2015 wasn’t fiction. (Remember, fiction has to make sense.)

There are still supporters of Barack Obama, despite the fact that (1) the economy is immensely overrated (look at the U6 unemployment rate and personal income growth), (2) the U.S. is now a joke to the rest of the world thanks to our foreign policy ineptitude, (3) we now have terrorists running around the U.S., and (4) Obama’s response is that global warming and our own guns are at fault. Obama is working hard to surpass, if that’s what you want to call it, Jimmy Carter as the worst president in this nation’s history.

Islamist terrorism has now become a bigger issue than the economy based on polls. And yet we have on one side Obama and his minions who claim it’s not a problem, countered by those who want to shred the Constitution (you know, that First Amendment thing about freedom of religion) to fight (or so they think) Islamists.

There are also, bizarrely, Americans who believe that the way to fix our problems since 2009 is to elect amoral liar Hillary Clinton, communist Bernie Sanders, or Donald Trump, who makes up his beliefs as he goes along. It makes you think maybe Winston Churchill was wrong when he said that democracy was only the second worst form of government in the world.

The person to fix all of this — or so people think when they vote for their favorite presidential candidate — will not be Gov. Scott Walker, whose campaign began and ended this year without a single presidential primary vote being cast. It was uncharacteristic in that one thing that has always stood out about Walker is his preparation. His campaign was not prepared for a national stage, and neither was the candidate. Again, Wisconsin is overrated in national politics.

 

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression (well, for now, anyway, unless the Move to Amend people get their way and shut down expression they don’t agree with); it does not guarantee freedom of expression without consequences, or polite freedom of expression. But the vitriol with which some people respond to things they disagree with continues to escalate, continuing to lead me to believe that we are about one step away from assassinations and murders over differences of political opinion. This should not be surprising given our zero-sum politics (as you know, one side wins, therefore the other side loses). We are, in fact, more divided than any period in our history since the Civil War, with no way to reunite us. I would suggest just ending the U.S. and carving up our part of the continent into, to quote former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, liberals and Americans, but that’s impossible to do.

Personally? I got to announce college basketball and three state basketball championship games, two of which ended in state championships. That is hard to top, to say the least. As those of you with whom I am Facebook Friends know that our kids set swim-team records and performed music and theater. As last year ended minus one cat (Mocha, R.I.P. at 14) but plus one dog (Max the Basenji/pit bull/something else) though the latter wasn’t planned, this year ended plus two cats, one of which emulates the previous household cat by running around in the middle of the night. And professionally, the area where I work continues to generate a remarkable amount of news for the newspaper editor, though whether that’s a good thing (bad news is job security for journalists) depends on your perspective.

As always, may your 2016 be better than your 2015. I’m pretty sure our nation’s and world’s 2016 will actually be worse.