Like most reasonably sentient people, I mainly classify years in personal milestones: the year I got married, the year I got a dog, the year I figured out that part of being an adult means actually paying the cable bill before they turn off your capability to order pay-per-view (that was this year, by the way, so at least I know it wasn’t a total wash). On a personal level, you’ll be pleased to know that 2015 turned out to be the year I finally bought the sectional for the living room I’ve been talking about wanting since about 1998, and I typed this article on a laptop with its own working keyboard. As a semi-journalist, however, I also try to look at the scope of the year as it plays out in cultural touchstones. What happened this year that made us think about things in a new way? Were they useful or enlightening? Do they reflect (as perhaps the best cultural entertainment products do) how have we, as a society, progressed? And, to paraphrase that now-infamous Reaganism that will haunt all Americans to our dying day: Are we better off now than we were one year ago?
It’s hard to remember this—in a year that saw a reality show host-cum-presidential hopeful spout rhetoric about Muslims that wouldn’t sound out of place in 1930s Nuremberg, and in a month when people were slaughtered for attending a holiday party for disabled adults in San Bernardino—but some pretty great things happened in 2015.
