Goodbye, Horrible Year

If 2011 was described as a “horrible year” by many international analysts, 2012 seems to present itself with equal credentials, at least if you judge news reports in the U.S. just as the start of the year arrived. The U.S. is ready now for the first round or line-up of the electoral race, although blood does not reach the river where Democrats and Republicans sail in search of the presidential chair of the White House.

On Tuesday, predictions named multimillionaire Mormon and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney the winner among Republican candidates in the Iowa caucus. But there’s still a long way until the Aug. 27 Republican National Convention narrows down the candidate, a nomination also sought by Texan Ron Paul; Rick Santorum, who incidentally has just declared, “I will bomb Iran”; the ultra-right Newt Gingrich; and those who follow them from a distance: Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman.

Only on Nov. 6 will we know for sure who will be the “chosen one” to defeat current President Barack Obama, whose path to reelection is fraught with problems, almost all confined to the macroeconomy, which has already shaken and dried out the pockets of ordinary Americans. Unemployment remains high and GDP barely grew in the year he left behind.

But the terrible news is coming from other corners of society.

For example, police in the state of Washington found the body of Benjamin Colton Barnes, an Iraq war veteran, who on Monday shot Margaret Anderson, a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. Just as Barnes’ thousands of other army comrades, the 24-year-old suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since returning from the battlefield; he was also suspected of sniping four other people during a year-end party.

Benjamin Colton Barnes has lived more than an “annus horribilis” and left his mark on another.

In that regenerative violence, New York Police also arrested Reggie Allen on the first day of the year when, machine gun and pistol in hand, he attempted to enter the city metro station in crowded Times Square. On his neck there read a tattoo: “Me against the world … ”

If this “lone wolf” was stopped in time before who knows what sort of killing could have occurred, others perhaps were more successful — at least in frightening and maintaining Islamophobia in a country that, since the attack on the Twin Towers, has been devoted to a crusade that smells more of oil and other valuable resources: At least four attacks with Molotov cocktails were committed in Queens, the largest district in New York, against Muslim centers and a Hindu temple.

The switch to the new year was similarly charged with violence. For example, in a Texas airport on Saturday, the FBI arrested a man who was carrying explosives in his bag and claiming to be active military.

And in West Hollywood and other Hollywood neighborhoods of Los Angeles, police arrested a suspect for questioning regarding 47 fires that, for almost a week, have shaken that Californian city, although it is unknown if this is the work of one individual or if there are imitators or accomplices. What looks like an extremely violent movie script, similar to those made in the local film industry, has been described as “domestic terrorism.”

Let’s not even mention the wars that are in preparation. In that case, pulling the trigger and killing has been legalized.

Thus, we can say that 2012 arrived “armed and dangerous” to be another candidate for the nefarious title of annus horribilis.