It was the best of years, it was the worst of years.

To hear some folks tell it, 2017 marked a hideous cataclysm in the affairs of man. “So long 2017, you won’t be missed,” wrote Robert Schlesinger in US News & World Report. “Little went well in 2017,” this sage confided in his threnody, “but maybe 2018 will be better.”

Mel Robbins , writing for CNN, sounded a similar note. “This year,” Robbins wrote, “I heard so many people ask, ‘Is this really happening?’” 2017 was “bizarre,” an “alternate reality.”

What happened in 2017 to mark it out as a year that will live in infamy? Dear Reader, I hope that you are sitting down. You will hardly believe the hideous truth. Quaff a bit of brandy. Have the smelling salts at hand. What was the unspeakable reality that sent almost the entire U.S. media, the academic establishment in toto, nearly all of Hollywood, and Democratic politicians from Washington state to Florida into hysterical mourning? Are you ready? Steady on. Take a deep breath. OK, here it is.

without their permission, over their strenuous objections, unremitting ridicule, and against their hermetically sealed certitude that such a thing was Someone those repositories of virtue did not favor was elected president of the United States in a free, open, democratic election. Can you believe it? Their candidate lost. Even worse, the opposing candidate was elected, over their strenuous objections, unremitting ridicule, and against their hermetically sealed certitude that such a thing was impossible impossible Kemo Sabe!

Now you know the worst. The 2016 presidential election worked as the Constitution said it was supposed to work, not the way Hollywood millionaires , Ivy-educated pundits, angry feminists, or partisan opponents wanted it to work.

There was other bad news in 2017. On November 8, 2016, the Dow Jones industrial average closed at 18,332. “Little went well” this year, so it is no surprise that the market closed on Friday, December 23 at 24,754. In other words, the market rose 6,422 points, or 35 percent, in little over a year. I’m told that represents more than $6 trillion in shareholder value. Horrible!

There were other terrible things in 2017. The United States, thanks in part to the exploitation of fracking technology, is now the world’s largest energy producer. Oil prices, to the chagrin of the Middle Eastern petrostates, and to Russia, are less than half what they were just a few years ago. (That’s one way the cunning Donald Trump kowtows to Vladimir Putin, by supporting policies that enhance America’s energy production.)

“Little went well in 2017,” quoth the scion of Arthur “see-no-evil-among-the-Kennedys” Schlesinger, except that unemployment is at 4.1 percent, consumer confidence is at a 17-year high, and 1.7 million jobs have been added over the course of this annus horribilis.

“Little went well in 2017”—unless, that is, you think that GDP over 3 percent is a good thing or that cutting 16 business-strangling regulations for every one new federal regulation is something to write home about.

“Little went well in 2017,” especially when you consider that the American military, with a $100 billion increase in its budget, is modernizing and strengthening. Meanwhile, illegal immigration is down more than 50 percent , even though Trump’s promised border wall has yet to be built.

“Little went well in 2017,” except that the United States now has an ardently pro-American president who puts the country’s interests, not the interests of the permanent bureaucracy and its media and academic echo chambers, first.