2017 a fine year to bid farewell — but learn from its lessons

2017 was a fabulous year to watch, as we now can, in the rearview mirror. Ideally while traveling away at warp speed.

Fires. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Floods. Mass murders. Politics by tweet, diplomacy by bluster and on and on. But there were just enough bright moments and heartening signs to keep us barreling into the future with hope intact.

For nearly every disaster that befell us, there were signs of enduring humanity to remind us of who we are. And there were lessons for the future.

In Houston, when floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey rose so fast that local rescuers couldn’t keep up, boat owners from hundreds of miles around raced to the city and formed a lifesaving flotilla, snatching families from rooftops. It had happened after Katrina, too. Apparently, in America, it’s a thing. A wonderful thing.

Then the fires, closer to home in the Wine Country, brought devastation and heartbreak — but many heartening tales as well, including a land flotilla of horse trailers to rescue animals.

In Las Vegas, more people died in a blaze of gunfire on Oct. 1 — 59 dead so far — than in the flames of California. Today residents are rallying around the more than 500 who were injured, many of whom lack health insurance.

And, yes, for those of us who had despaired of reason in politics, Alabama did finally reject the judge who used to date children and elect, gasp, a Democrat to the U.S. Senate.

Whether it’s the man-made or the natural disasters, politics are part of the solution to the problems that marked 2017. So our mission — yours, actually, if you choose to accept it — is to work with determination to restore reason and public-interested leadership to government.

For example, in the West, where fire is destined to be a recurring drama in this century, there are ways to help prevent wildfires. In Houston, flooding escalated when officials had to start releasing water from a dam thought to be unsound. Decisions to invest in fire prevention and infrastructure like dams and bridges are made (or not made) in legislatures and in Congress.

September’s magnitude 8.1 earthquake in Mexico City killed hundreds, but it would have been worse without Mexico’s early warning system that gave people from 20 seconds to more than a minute to seek cover. A similar system is in development for the U.S., but the Trump administration — less enlightened than Mexico’s in this case — has cut it from the federal budget.

And Las Vegas. Where to begin? A man with an arsenal of guns, some modified to mimic automatic weapons, set up shop in a casino hotel and mowed down concertgoers roughly on the scale of the terrorist truck attack in Nice, France, in 2016. But this did not fall into the “terrorism” silo. It was just one of those American slaughters. So it moved lawmakers not at all.

2018 has to be a better year than the last one. It just has to. But it’s really up to us.

Whether it’s the manmade or the natural disasters, politics are part of the solution to the problems that marked 2017.