2017 is just about here. A new year begins. The perennial hope that a fresh calendar will bring forth both renewal and positive change again beckons.

Few are likely to express any longing for the one we have just collectively endured, mostly because it was so unrelentingly divisive. Then again, who can opine about anything these days with any certainty? More and more people seem to be becoming willingly addicted to the 24-7 combative nature of our present political unrest. Facebook becomes more and more an In-Your-Face avenue of compulsive venting.

The historic presidential election of 2016 is now over, but in no way fully done. The people spoke and mostly it was name-calling. The very notion of We The People has seemingly been permanently restated as Them vs Us. Among both winners and losers, and the great many that ultimately sat it out, the prevalent New Year’s resolution appears to be the desire to dismantle the very way our election process works at every level of governance.

Politics has always been contentious, but this is the first time in my memory that even the winning candidate contends that the system was rigged. Nothing and no one’s to be trusted except those marching lockstep to the same partisan drummer.

Those on the losing end of a political outcome now defiantly refuse to accept defeat, a refusal encouraged by a growing cottage industry of political action organizations that find defeat just another opportune motivation to solicit endlessly sought funding.

Those on the winning end of our new take-no-prisoners politics can’t even look forward to what was once a traditionally respected short-lived honeymoon period before partisan attack eventually rejoined.

Now, full-fledged attack mode doesn’t abate even for a single news cycle. That’s particularly good news for a mainstream media so dependent on a steady diet of rancor, fear and loathing as its principal meat and potatoes.

The new political buzzword is “fake news,” pitting social media’s unfiltered immediacy against the increasingly irrelevant corporate media gatekeepers. Gatekeepers that unquestioningly disseminated the truth of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Those that couldn’t recognize their own complicity in elevating a reality T.V. celebrity to our nation’s highest office. Those that now report what are still allegations of strongly suspected Soviet interference in our recent election as absolute fact. Those that the incoming leader of the free world either dismisses, deftly manipulates or circumvents with spontaneously directed tweets that invent truths as he sees fit.

Here in Maine we’re still blessed with a regional Fourth Estate motivated by truth and professionalism rather than simply profiting on controversy and entertainment. I still trust it more than the erratic veracity of an e-existing Fifth Estate’s inherent lack of accountability. Here in Maine the distinction between bias and truth is still generally acknowledged even if it often isn’t a gubernatorial top down practice.

Though it might be small comfort as a comparison, we Mainers have survived six long years of what America at large will soon begin to experience by having an insulated autocrat in control of the executive branch of government. We’re familiar with fake news routinely generated from our state’s highest office. We’re familiar with bold promises based solely on boldness.

Our governor continues to display a Trumpian ignorance of the workings of government and an open disregard for the law, the legislature, the democratic process and a free press’ right of access on behalf of the electorate. LePage’s latest example is his declaration that Maine’s recently approved ballot referendums are just “recommendations” that “the legislature doesn’t even need to enact.”

His election was touted by loyalists as a fresh alternative to all that’s wrong with established governance. His hyped business acumen would usher in high paying “quality” jobs. Life As It Should Be was replaced with Open For Business. Yet, Maine has remained stagnant on just about every front under his entrenched refusal to find legislative common ground.

Last week, Norway’s Statoil was awarded the winning bid for wind energy development off New York’s Long Island. Its prior proposal to develop U.S. based wind power generation in the Gulf of Maine was scuttled by LePage’s lack of any real economic or environmental leadership. Collaterally slated to be Statoil’s local provider of wind turbines, BIW now heads into 2017 even more dependent on elusive defense procurements as its sole source of revenue.

Instead of securing Maine’s leadership in sustainable energy, LePage chose to go his own way and a major intended investor in Maine’s struggling economy took the highway elsewhere. That missed opportunity remains LePage’s saddest real news legacy.

LePage’s most sensational self-generated fake news story was his recent irrational claim that over 90 percent of Maine’s drug trafficking is perpetrated by men of color.

Whether deemed optimistic or pessimistic, the most game-changing political news of 2017 might well be foretold by what our experience under a LePage administration has borne out. Hopefully, the bi-partisan reality check that Maine’s legislature immediately brought to bear upon LePage’s grandiose delusion of imperial executive power will be similarly repeated by a sufficiently independent U.S. Congress.

Fingers crossed.