4

The Real "War On Cops" Was In The 1920s, Not The 2010s

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In July, the U.S. took a break from being horrified by the constant shooting of civilians by the police to be horrified by the murder of five Dallas police officers. It fit the narrative that we all seem to have in our heads: Police officers have become terrified to walk the streets because of how violent and anti-blue the U.S. has become, so they tragically overreact to every potential threat they see. But the truth is that the number of cop killings has been steadily declining since the '70s.

BBC

You'll notice that police officer fatalities are way down from the U.S.'s Death Wishiest years during the '70s, when several militant groups tried to counter police brutality by declaring open season on cops. In fact, the only statistic that has risen in the past century is the number of police officers per capita. So unless the Black Panthers have made a comeback without us noticing, police officers might have to admit that their job is the safest it has been since disco died.

3

We've Faced Worse Immigration Issues

John Moore/Getty Images

We don't want to downplay the genuine concern that immigrants are experiencing right now, because it must be a dreadful feeling, knowing that it's more acceptable to be orange than brown these days. But the sad truth is that it's always been hard finding acceptance as an immigrant in the United States. Even sadder, American immigrants from previous generations would look at all of the ugly rhetoric currently flying around and find it adorably polite.

Let's take a trip back to the 1850s and the heyday of the Know Nothing Party (also redundantly known as the "American Party"), a group aptly named, but not for the reasons they think. They too thought that immigrants were destroying their country. Specifically, they were concerned about Germans and Irish, who were bringing the unimaginable horrors of Catholicism with them. Catholics, they feared, were too religiously extreme and would always put their dogmatic religion before their nation. After all, how could you trust people who are loyal to someone as vile and un-American as that dastardly Pope?

Franco Origlia/Getty Images
South America doesn't count.

2

Every Year Is "The Worst Year Ever" For Celebrity Deaths

Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

It feels like 2016 is the year the Grim Reaper decided that he wanted to put together a talent show. Celebrities are rapidly becoming an endangered species, and perhaps no one summed it up better than CNN when they said "The year seems to have been filled with an inordinate amount of high-profile deaths -- some even on the same day."

Except we tricked you again, because you foolishly keep trusting us. That quote was from 2009, when CNN was talking about the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Bea Arthur, Patrick Swayze, Walter Cronkite, John Updike, Les Paul, Billy Mays, Ted Kennedy, and many, many more, to the point where they included the freaking Taco Bell dog.

Taco Bell
Who was ground up and used as filling in their Chalupa Supreme.

But even 2009 wasn't really that much of a standout year when it came to famous fatalities. As is the case with every other entry in this article, it's all about awareness. That same article goes on to point out that 2009's celebrity death extravaganza could be attributed more to increased awareness than a statistical freak show or a curse. Despite blaming "our hyper-caffeinated, overly Twittered culture," CNN, the well-meaning but dazed grandma of news outlets, was correct that social media is a key competent.

If you saw a headline on a news site or those things made of paper that old people on the subway look at, your involvement in a celebrity death would start and conclude with a respectful "That sucks." But Facebook, Twitter, Xanga, and all the other popular social media sites turn celebrity deaths into multi-day mourning periods. And to prove that it's the time we spend thinking about celebrity deaths and not the body count itself that's steadily rising, we can point to these useful charts, courtesy of Gizmodo, because a good chart can prove anything.

Gizmodo

1

The United States' Most Contentious Election Was In 1876

David McNew/Getty Images

There's no denying that the 2016 election got ugly. Real ugly. Spray tan ugly. Americans felt they had to choose between perhaps the two least-deserving candidates ever to run: an openly antipathetic basic-cable celebrity and a politician with a vagina. Nobody was in a good mood. Things were said, emails were leaked, pussies were reportedly grabbed, and people lost hope in the electoral process itself. But despite all of this, the election was nowhere near as nasty as it could have been. For that, we have to go all the way back to 1876.

During the 1876 U.S. presidential election, Rutherford B. Hayes took on Samuel J. Tilden, in America's greatest grudge match to ever involve such old-timey names. Brutal attacks rained down from across the political spectrum. Tilden was accused of being everything from a thief to a "drunken syphilitic," and the question of whether he was healthy enough to run for president was constantly raised, despite a lack of evidence (he lived for another decade). Meanwhile, white supremacists threatened newly enfranchised black voters in the south to keep them from voting for Hayes, and the Democrats had some key votes annulled because they were found to have committed voter fraud by using misleading ballots. It was whatever the 1876 equivalent of a clusterfuck was. A hootenannyfornication.

Brown Brothers
Also, this man ran as a third-party candidate, and America tragically refused to declare him King for Life.

The Republicans countered by also committing voter fraud. During a recount in key states, Republican-controlled election boards began throwing out ballots for Tilden that were considered suspicious, on the grounds that wanting Tilden to win is mighty suspicious for a true-blooded American. Long story short, everyone was trying to commit fraud everywhere, all of the time.

The election wasn't decided until March, when a special committee (which had its own corruption issues) assembled to decide what the hell had happened. They awarded 20 disputed Southern Electoral College votes to Hayes to put him over the top. Southern Democrats agreed not to challenge the results in exchange for a variety of political concessions from Republicans which included letting racists take control of the South again. Depending on which modern historian you ask, this was either highway robbery or the result that probably would have occurred anyway if everything was done legally.

It's also important to note that Hayes, who went on to be a rather average President, lost the popular vote. Tilden, who had garnered over 250,000 more votes, commented on this by saying, "I can retire to private life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office." These are words we assume Hillary Clinton is getting tattooed across her back right now.

AL.com

CBS News
Thanks, Electoral College!

This doesn't make the tone of the 2016 election any better, but if the U.S. could survive the nonsense of 1876, it can survive anything. That's the lesson to take away from all of this. When you have a terrible year, you can't give into gloom and despair. You simply have to put it in context, realize we've survived worse, and try to make the next year better.

Mark is on Twitter, and wrote the greatest book of 2016.

Also check out 8 Huge Stories Nobody Paid Attention To In 2016 and 15 Events That Would Redeem The 2016 Train Wreck.

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