It was 2016, and "2016 is the worst year ever" entered the zeitgeist. Between Trump's "election" and a slew of beloved celebrity deaths bringing further sad clouds over the news cycle, the intent was obvious.
2017 didn't improve the situation much.
But 2018's awfulness lives on a different scale, and here's why: it's underscored by violence.
Celebrity deaths are part of life, but the increase in school shootings means that innocent children die at a rate 100x of celebrities.
The epidemic of school shootings brings a chill effect to those of us who haven't had kids yet. How are you supposed to raise children in the United States? Do you simply wing it and send your kids in every day and hope for the best? Do you place your faith in armed security?* Does it help if you shift your finances to send the kid to a private school?**
(*Perhaps you shouldn't: the "good guy with a gun" never materializes during an incident. The armed guard at Parkland stayed outside, presumably rationally scared stiff. An colleague with military experience remarked that from a tactical perspective, a school shooting is a surprise attack, and you'd need to be SOCOM Tier 1 or Tier 2 to even have a chance in such a scenario. School teachers are... not of that qualification.)
(**My thoughts here are complicated. I went to a private school growing up. My friends' public school had more fights and more injuries. Still, mine received a bomb threat when I was young. No one's invincible.)
The chill effect suggests that school shootings aren't just depressing, sad, angering news that ruin your mood for a day. Worse, violence is often a response to other problems gone unsolved. Further bad news. The severity of the shooting epidemic will probably begin to affect life decisions - first for educated and highly mobile people, then on down to the less educated.
Back to celebrities. Anthony Bourdain rightly receives a lot of ink and pixels. The personal stories from other celebs, from chefs, and from random civilian fans are too many to encapsulate (a sign of a great man who perhaps was underestimated during his life). But let me highlight one tribute: a review of his trips to the Middle East.
His episode on Iran, better than any other, drove home that life as a visitor on the ground can differ drastically from what's on TV. It helped me to the realization that every Persian I've ever known is a delightful person. Not merely good, with which we often connote the absence of badness, but good as a force of positivity. One who makes your life better when they're around. And that Middle Eastern food looks downright incredible.
I'll highlight another: that he matured into an uncompromising good guy. Quoth Helen Rosner for the New Yorker:
Bourdain was right there, for everyone, in equal measure. He remembered names. He took every question seriously. He was twenty minutes early to every appointment, to the minute. Every newspaper, every magazine, every Web site that asked got its Bourdain quotes—and good ones, too! Not pre-scripted pablum but potent missiles of cultural commentary—bombastic wisdom, grand pronouncements, eviscerations of celebrities, flagrantly named names.
But you can't ignore that this year's celebrity deaths are suicides. Violence, by a different name.
This piece doesn't end with a comforting platitude like a resolution to be a more relaxed, more genuine, more curious, more friendly person like Bourdain was. If he were writing an episode script out of his life's final chapter, it likely wouldn't end comfortably.
It might even suddenly snap to black.