Opinion

President-elect Donald Trump had the most perfect New Year’s tweet. And by perfect, we mean perfectly awful. Say what you will, the man has an uncanny ability to compress his entire sick personality into a mere 140 characters.

For those readers concerned with the deteriorating global order, a toxic presidential race, or the sputtering world economy, the fact that yoga has now been added to the ever-lengthening list of cultural appropriations may not seem worthy of even a second glance. But news it was, the story broken by the Ottawa Sun last Fall that students at the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Students with Disabilities nixed the practice due to concerns over its potential for cultural appropriation. (The classes later resumed.)

I vowed to create a Trump-free space on Christmas day, to nurture the holiday spirit and to get out from under the toxic presence of everything associated with the President-elect. In this regard I found I was at least partly aligned with most Americans, who according to the pollsters at Rasmussen were overwhelmingly ready for a joyous Christmas. There was a time when I dismissed Rasmussen’s findings—their data widely understood to be skewed toward Republicans and therefore not fair and balanced. But that bias paid off for them in November, as Rasmussen along with a poll attributed to the Los Angeles Times were among the few that accurately predicted the election results, so reluctantly they are back on my radar.

There’s a joke among insurers that there are two things that health insurance companies hate to do – take risks and pay claims. But, of course, these are the essence of their business!

Trump campaign official Carl Paladino recently made headlines for being a disgustingly racist pig of a human being. The former GOP gubernatorial candidate, who managed to get himself elected to the Buffalo, New York, school board, responded to a survey about his New Year's wishes by attacking the Obamas in the most baldly ugly and racist way imaginable, including wishing for Michelle Obama to be “let loose” in Africa so she could live with apes. He also repeated the racist alt-right meme of her being a man, and said he hoped President Obama “catches mad cow disease” and then “dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.”

As early as January, when David Bowie departed the scene, some were already looking dubiously at 2016. Bowie was an icon of the 1970s, the era when what is now the dominant section of the population in most Western societies in terms of spending power – the post-war baby boomers – came to maturity. As more cultural legends from that age also died – many without the last burst of creativity that made Bowie’s death so poignant – 2016 began to feel like the end of an era.

History warns us to be very, very careful when using the phrase "white working class." The reason has nothing to do with political correctness. Rather, it concerns the changing historical definitions of who is "white."

President-elect Donald Trump is accusing President Obama of putting up “roadblocks” to a smooth transition.

This year’s divisive Presidential election has left citizens voicing uncertainty about their right to life and liberty and their pursuit of happiness. Although elections inevitably leave some people feeling disappointed, the distress is not subsiding in December 2016. People fear what President-elect Donald Trump might do (or undo) regarding human rights. I see college students crying, Pakistani restaurateurs threatened and friends too depressed to read the news.

One of the tiring traits of academic history is the habit of looking to earlier versions of current circumstances to suggest that nothing is new and that precedents for anything can be found. At the risk of falling into the trap, however, there may be benefits to exploring the parallels between the white nationalism, nativist fears, and social anxieties attributed to many of Donald Trump's followers and similar reverberations characterizing the cultural crises of the 1920s United States.

It wasn't all bad for Chris Christie in 2016. The guy he backed for president -- despite overwhelming criticism and long odds -- actually won. He garnered praise in New Jersey for his abiding support of addiction recovery. There were some encouraging gains in the state-run Camden school district. And he's still got a pretty sweet…

If 2016 had a face we would punch it.  So hard.

Republicans love reminding liberals that their party "freed the slaves." Some know enough history to remind Democrats that their party, in fact, defended slavery. While true, they cherry pick their parts of US History—a 150-year old part, at that.