EARTH— Now-a-days people close their eyes while turning on the news and who can blame them with all the constant violence, corruption, and widespread hatred. Gas prices are up, technology is making our children dumb, and — according to Alex Jones — liberals are putting chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay; clearly the world is in turmoil.

And to make things worse, all this tragedy and chaos occurred within the timespan of a single year, so much so that a diverse world of frustrated and bitter people joined together to create a phantom punching bag out of the year 2016 that they had personified as an indiscriminate serial killer. 2016 has been called a “hell year” by people who were looking for something to put blame on but still fear God, but was it really all that bad?

While there is no doubt that a lot of terrible things happened over the past year, we can’t forget that there were positive things that happened. Veteran homelessness has decreased by 47% since 2010 according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, Siberian Tigers, White Rhinos, and Grizzly Bears are no longer endangered species, and the viral disease measles was eradicated in North America.

And those are just a few of the good things that happened.

But the question still stands: was 2016 truly the worst year in history?

2016, in summary, was plagued with terrorist attacks, racial tension, intense political discourse, celebrity death, and also the uncontested rise of meme-loving “alt-right” neo-Nazis. Together all these storms fused into one massive tsunami of trash but was last year’s plight worse than the disasters of 1348? Or the misfortunes of 1492 or 1919 or 2003?

In 1348 the world was in the midst of being ravaged by both the black plague and political turmoil. The Black Plague — which had taken hold of all the major trade routes from Europe to Asia — was in full swing, killing thousands every day and eventually killing a third of the population of Europe.

The year 1492 apparently took this as a challenge because 1492 marked an all-time high in human suffering. In that year the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain had completed their campaign against the Moors and proceeded to kill and enslave about half-a-million Muslim people over the next few years, expelled the entirety of its Jewish population, and additionally let the raving explorer Christopher Columbus off his chain.

But in terms of turmoil, however, 1919 has 1492 beat.

In 1919 the United States had effectively won the First World War but failed to follow up on the peace aspect. Instead the US and Company wrote up the Treaty of Versaille unjustly condemning Germany to complete and utter ruin which almost directly lead to the rise of the Third Reich and World War 2 and at the same time the US Senate refused to join the United Nations prototype, the League of Nations, despite the coalition being Woodwill Wilson’s own idea. On top of all this the economy began to fail, racially-fueled riots began to erupt throughout the US, massive labor strikes by factory workers lead to the very first Red Scare which caused the US government to commit the largest civil rights violation in half-a-century, and an influenza epidemic had killed around 16 million people worldwide.

But in terms of federal stability 2003 takes the cake for the title of “worst year”.

Coming straight out of the World Trade Center Attack of 2001, the Bush administration and its merry gang of warmongers began mobilization for what seemed like another large-scale conflict. In response to this however came the largest global demonstration of peace in history with anti-war protests sprouting up all over the planet. The media, however, completely failed to capture this and instead showed sympathy protests in Baghdad — a display that helped no one — and began to aggressively attack the Bush administration about the lies and semi-truths it was using to rationalize a war in the Middle East causing both Republican and Democratic Parties to question Bush’s connection to 9/11 and 9/11’s shady links to Middle Eastern oil. This whole convoluted political and semi-nationalistic maelstrom ended with the US going to war and completely ruining the Middle East anyway because the real problems of the time were swept under the rug by macho patriotism and the public’s ability to chant “USA! USA!” instead of actually addressing their country’s faults.

So in conclusion, 2016 is clearly not the “worst year of all time” nor is it a living, breathing sociopathic killer. It is, however, a year in which a fair amount of bad things happened. But before you jump on the “I hate 2016” bandwagon maybe you should introspect a little and think about the fact that maybe 2016 was so terrible because we, collectively as a society, made it so terrible via our actions… and our lack of action.