On the east coast, 2017 will start eleven hours from the time of this post going live. It couldn’t get here any faster. While 2016 was likely good for many people personally (and in particular for sports teams such as the Cavaliers and Cubs), overall it was a downer, and it’s good the slate can be wiped clean.

The year started off with a downer when it was announced David Bowie died on January 10. Celebrities die every year, but 2016 was a particularly harsh year because iconic figures passed away. In addition to Bowie, there was Merle Haggard, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Glenn Frey, Carrier Fisher, Gene Wilder, Muhammed Ali, Alan Rickman, Dave Mirra, Antonin Scalia, Nancy Reagan, Gordie Howe — the list goes on and on. Carrie Fisher’s death at the end of the year followed by her mother, Debbie Reynolds, dying a day later, punctuated the mess.

In politics, many conservatives, myself included, had to sit back and watch a field of presidential candidates including Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were both laid to waste by Donald Trump in the GOP primaries. The jury is still out on Trump, but seeing as how he’s playing see/speak/hear no evil when it comes to Donald Trump and threatening to implement tariffs, he’s not off to the best of starts. Hopefully, his cabinet will talk him out of his horrible ideas and somebody on his national security team will start to talk some sense into him about Russia.

The US election overall was like watching a slow moving train wreck. Hillary Clinton is one of the worst political candidates in US history. She won the popular vote by nearly 3 million, yet somehow managed to lose the election because she didn’t want to campaign in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The hubris of the Clinton campaign gave way to arrogance, and in the end, they were reduced to blubbering about James Comey as if blue-collar voters in Michigan, worried about their jobs gave a rat’s ass about the FBI Director.

Meanwhile, Trump was the candidate who did whatever the hell he wanted; the consequences be damned. Just like with the primaries, every time the media or talking heads declared Trump’s campaign to be dead, he scratches and claws his way back and in the end, the only one who didn’t get caught off guard by Trump’s win is a guy named Bill Mitchell.

In the midst of all that, there were homegrown terrorist attacks, young men being gunned down in Chicago on a daily basis, and genocide in Syria, unfolding before our very eyes with a sitting President, refusing to do anything about it.

Hopefully, 2017 will be better.