2015, More or Less

English: Kim Kardashian at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival for the premiere of Wonderful World. Photographer's blog post about these photos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This was the year of More or Less, though it seems that way every year.  Only more so.  And our options for doing anything about them are less.  In 2015 alone, there was . . .

• More war in the Middle East, which leads to more terrorism, more refugees (or migrants, if you prefer), more bombing strikes which makes the enemy stronger, and fewer answers.
• More attacks on civilians, whether it's of the terrorist kind (Paris--twice--and San Bernardino), the lone-wolf type (Charleston, Colorado Springs and Lafayette, Louisiana), or any other random act (anywhere in America).  Less willingness to control guns or improve mental health screening, more security theater.
• More protests against white police officers who kill African American suspects.  Less willingness to convict those officers, video evidence or not.
• More evidence that climate change is going to be worse than imagined. Meanwhile, we're reading that even though people are paying less money for gas, the American economy's alleged recovery isn't happening.
• More rights for same-sex couples, as even the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to let them marry.  Which leads to more people like Kim Davis who want to send LGBTs back into the closet.
• More Catholic (and other) priests are being reined in for sexual abuse charges several decades in the making.  Which is part of the reason why less people consider themselves Christians, and why more of them have given up on religion altogether.
• More candidates stepped up to campaign for President Barack Obama's job, which becomes available in 2017.  More campaign money than ever before has been coming from big political donors.  Unless your name is Donald Trump.  Less of a chance that Republicans can successfully counter Trump's outrageousness and in curbing their zeal for turning back the clock on Obama's accomplishments, or for Democrats to take anyone but Hillary Clinton seriously.
• More women have come out of the shadows (some after several decades) to accuse Bill Cosby of allegedly drugging, then raping them.  Unless Cosby and his lawyers can prove otherwise, his accomplishments as a groundbreaking entertainer become less and less reputable.
• More publicity for the Kardashians.  Bruce Jenner is now Caitlyn, and is being hailed as a role model of sorts.  Lamar Odom, the former basketball star married to Khloe, has a near-death experience at a brothel in Nevada.  Kim poses nude for an obscure magazine, then gives birth to a boy.  Husband Kanye West wants to run for President in 2020.  Less chance that we've heard the last of The Family K in 2016.
• More movie blockbusters like the "Star Wars", "Hunger Games" and "Jurassic Park" spiking the box office totals.  Less reason to bother watching films intended for comic book geeks, requiring a working knowledge of the chapters that came before, at prices that rival a night at the ballpark.
• More shows and personalities leaving TV:  "Mad Men", "Parks and Recreation", "Two-and-a-Half Men", "How I Met Your Mother", "CSI:  Crime Scene Investigation", David Letterman and Jon Stewart.  Less exposure for former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, whose "misremembering" of events he may or may not have been a part of got him demoted to MSNBC.
• Taylor Swift and Adele are seeing more and more sales for their albums and their concert tours.  Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea and Justin Bieber are seeing less and less people care about them.
• More use of hashtags on social media, meaning less use of the words "of", "and", "the" to drive English teachers nuts.
• More people bought copies of Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman", her first published novel in more than 50 years.  After seeing what became of Atticus Finch, however, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is less of a classic than it used to be.
• Playboy magazine, which helped start the sexual revolution in the 1950s, is giving up its nude centerfolds because more and more people are getting their naked female fix on the Internet, which translates into less and less subscribers.  Obviously, Hugh Hefner's creation is hoping that more and more people will be reading the articles.

There are more notable people who died this year than this list provides.  That doesn't mean we think anything less of them.

Mario Cuomo, Stuart Scott, Rod Taylor, Bob Simon, David Carr, Lesley Gore, Leonard Nimoy, B.B. King, Omar Sharif, E.L. Doctorow, Bobbi Kristina Brown, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Julian Bond, Paul Prudhomme, Maureen O'Hara, Fred Thompson, Allen Toussaint, David Canary, Scott Weiland, Donna Douglas, Dean Jones, Ben E. King, Cynthia Lennon, Colleen McCullough, Rod McKuen, Jayne Meadows, Anne Meara, John Nash, Al Molinaro, Dick Van Patten, Bud Kraehling, Dick Chapman, Stan Freberg, Meadowlark Lemon, Theodore Bikel, Yvonne Craig, Richard Dysart, Anita Ekberg, Marty Ingels, Louis Jourdan, Kirk Kerkorian, Christopher Lee, Robert Loggia, Marjorie Lord, Patrick Macnee, Gary Owens, Betsy Palmer, Jerry Weintraub, Natalie Cole and Wayne Rogers.

That was 2015.  Here comes 2016 . . . more or less.