2016: A Damnable Year

We'd have to show Germany levels of commitment to earn the continent's trust.

BUMP!

Honestly, I STILL feel people are exaggerating how bad last year was. Sure, it wasn't pretty (Especially thanks to the Election and Brexit), but even in the 2000s, i'd say 2001 and 2008 were far worse. In 2001, 9/11 alone made it worse than this year. The 3,000 killed made it the deadliest terrorist attack of all time on Western soil, and completely destroyed our old perception of reality. Before then, we didn't think terrorism could happen to us. We all thought that it was only a thing that could happen in the Middle East, and that we were peaceful and safe. That completely blew apart the old reality, now no one was safe. And just one month after that, the War on Terror began, devestating places like Iraq and Afghanistan. George W. Bush's presidency also began that year.

And in 2008, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, one we still haven't fully recovered from, began.

I also feel people ignore the past on some occasions. There were police killings before this year (Michael Brown, Eric Garner, etc.) there were much worse epidemics than Zika (Even just last year there was Ebola), the Middle East has always had violence and terrorism (In fact, though the means of getting there leaved MUCH to be desired, ISIS has lessened).

Was last year a good year? No. Was it the worst in decades? I don't think so.

edited 23rd Jan '17 8:47:49 AM by WhatArtThee

2016's worst effects will come up in this year and the following ones. And I'd argue that the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey, France, the UK (to some extent), Poland, Hungary, the Philippines, and especially the US has the potential to do far more damage than 9/11 did. And the world's biggest economy is now run by climate change deniers.

That's because you look at this from a limited perspective. Yeah, 9/11 was terrible, but not only was it ONE event (though one with far-reaching consequences), it didn't put the democracy of a number of countries which were considered "stable" in question.

9/11 may not have put democracies in question, but it definitely put the safety of America and Europe in question, attacks like that no one thought could happen before.

And the logic that it was "ONE" event doesn't work. Lots of events can have massive consequences. The JFK assassination, the March on Washington...

edited 23rd Jan '17 9:01:45 AM by WhatArtThee

Can you stop with the "the only bad things were the ones in the US and the UK"? it's getting tiresome.

edited 23rd Jan '17 8:59:22 AM by IFwanderer

I know those weren't the ONLY bad things, they were just the ones which had some of the biggest impacts.

edited 23rd Jan '17 9:00:05 AM by WhatArtThee

You know, the coup in Turkey and the, shall we say, irregular situation in Brazil were probably just as bad (At the very least, the situation in Brazil affects my country more directly). Seriously, there's more to the world than US+Britain.

Exactly...there is also the situation in Poland, which actually worries me more than Brexit.

Last year it seems like there were fires breaking out all over the world. There were so many, there are certainly a number I missed, because I was distracted by another catastrophe.

I know there's more to the world than US and Britain.

edited 23rd Jan '17 9:10:55 AM by WhatArtThee

Then understand that this thread is about the world and not just them. Most of the world didn't really change after 9/11. 2016, on the other hand, has several similar events happening in every region of the world.

I wouldn't say similar scale events to 9/11 happened in every region. That's way exaggerated.

And lots of the world was effected by 9/11. Many other countries cracked down on terrorism regulations, and the Middle East of course was effected.

And also, none of this is new. Violence, political unrest, and such have been common since the beginning of civilization. I don't think there was ever a year when there wasn't at least a couple bad events.

edited 23rd Jan '17 10:47:37 AM by WhatArtThee

I think Shinra meant events similar to each other, not similar to 9/11.

Okay.

But, anyway, this debate's going nowhere, so I think we should give it a rest.

The Doomsday Clock has moved to 2 and 1/2 minutes to midnight thanks to 2016.

Washington Post: Mikhail Gorbachev is worried about a world war. He hopes Trump and Putin can stop it.

What's going on in Poland? I know a right-wing government got elected there but I don't know the details.

That's more a topic of either the European Politics thread of the Eastern European Politics Thread.

Honestly I think it's time this thread get locked, if we want a 2017 thread I think that's fine, but 2016 is over.

Seconded.

2016 just feels like a tipping point....the moment the world was about to slide back from everything which was achieve. And to be clear about this: We achieved a LOT since WWII. There was a time at which every second person on the planet was starving. Now it is only every tenth. All our rivers were full of poison, now a lot of them have been cleaned up again. Not to mention that I have spend 25 years not worrying about the possibility of WWIII, because it seemed such an unrealistic thing. Since 2016 I have started worrying again.

I was under the impression Gorbachev was dead, but I can't honestly say why. I think I thought I had heard news about his death at some point.

Well, I guess he is quite old today. And more importantly, he was a visible part of an era that feels like a totally different time, even if it was only 25 years ago.

It feels like you were living in the 1970's and comrade Stalin would occasionally comment on the recent political events in a newspaper column. Or read Napoleon's and Metternich's musings on diplomatic implications of assassination of archduke Franz-Ferdinand and the military situation in Europe in 1914. Except 25 years isn't that long and Gorba was quite young for a Soviet leader, so he is still around...

edited 30th Jan '17 7:02:34 AM by maus42

It might also be because Gorbatchev is irrelevant at world (or even Russian) politics. He's a case of Dude, Where's My Respect? where despite all the humanitarian good his actions did, the economical chaos caused by the Union's sudden fall make everyone hate his guts.

2016 was IMHO a breaking point.