Droughts, aging heroes, gentrification and the horror show that is American politics means 2017 may surpass 2016 in terms of terribleness. Beyond our president-elect, there’s much more scary stuff just on the horizon, sorted here from least terrifying to most terrifying:
1. The avocado shortage isn’t over.
Like any good person from Northern California, I need my one-a-day, or I get the shakes. So this ongoing shortage — a result of global warming and drought — is going to continue to make a lot of Californians very unhappy.
2. A lot of amazing heroes who survived 2016 are very, very old.
Please, Grim Reaper, be kind to us this year. Mel Brooks (90), Betty White (94), Fats Domino (88), Angela Lansbury (91), Noam Chomsky (88), Doris Day (92), Joan Didion (82), Chuck Berry (90), Bobby Seale (80) and Tony Bennett (90) are all getting up there.
3. Oakland could enter its hyper-gentrification phase.
Uber’s new building in uptown Oakland is slated to open in 2017, and with it, 2,000–3,000 well-heeled employees will commute to work in uptown every day, exiting at the 19th Street BART station. This daily migration of office workers with six-figure salaries into downtown Oakland has the potential to transform this strip of Oakland into the same bland agglomeration — one of fast-casual restaurants and third-wave coffee bars with single-word names set in a modernist sans serif font — that now characterizes much of SOMA.
In other words, Uber’s entrée into Oakland might be the tipping point we’ve all feared. Oakland’s African American population has borne the brunt of the displacing effects of gentrification. The African American community’s population in Oakland dropped by 25% from 2001 to 2011—perhaps a harbinger of what’s yet to come.
4. There goes your health insurance.
One estimate suggests that 36,000 people will die needlessly every year if the GOP repeals Obamacare, per the Republican policy platform to make the United States better resemble Mad Max: Fury Road.
5. The orange, small-fingered elephant in the room.
You knew this was coming. Starting on January 20, we will have a reality-TV president who has no understanding of how nuclear weapons work, finds joy in being a petty bully to others, has no respect for democracy, has overseen rampant croneyism in his government appointments, has taken pride in appointing cabinet members who know nothing about the departments they are slated to govern and whose remarks have whipped up racism, misogyny and xenophobia and emboldened a burgeoning white nationalist movement.
It’s almost certainly the beginning of the end of the American Republic and possibly capitalism’s death knell too. In short, we’re descending into dystopia territory here. You might be thinking, “Well, with all this bullshit, maybe he’ll get impeached pretty quick.” About that…
6. If Trump is impeached, our new president will be a theocratic totalitarian who takes perverse pleasure in the subjugation of women and LGBTQ folks.
And as a career politician, Pence knows what he’s doing more so than Trump — politically speaking. He also hates unions and working people— basically, anyone who isn’t a rich white straight evangelical. May God have mercy on us all.
