Sohn: Year in review — from tragedy to hope

This was the year that terror came to Chattanooga.

We already had watched as senseless hatred and violence and bigotry played out in terrorist actions on our televisions in other cities or countries. But until July 16, we had not seen it here.

In the way that news recounts from Anycity, Someotherplace, can't do, a 24-year-old's terrorist attack against two military offices here - along with the five deaths and two injuries those attacks caused - we came tragically to identify with scenes from Fort Hood, then Paris and then San Bernardino.

We came, in fact, to hear our city's name mentioned in the same sentence with those other cities in two speeches by President Barack Obama.

And even as we rallied for Chattanooga Strong, the cumulative attacks put Americans on a fear alert like nothing since 9/11. The ensuing political rhetoric from both national parties came to dwell on little else. In debates and public appearances one after another, presidential candidates - especially those in the bloated GOP field - trotted out their "ISIS strategy" - virtually the same, tired nonideas they offered in the empty post 9-11 era.

But the rise of the Trump Reich gave such talk the patina of vulgar lunch counter conversation when the blow-dried blow-hard told his audiences: "I would bomb the --t out of 'em!"

That's about as helpful and thoughtful a foreign policy as cutting off your hands to go on a diet.

But the chaos candidate is his own 2015 top story. Here's hoping our 2016 top story will be the fall of the Trump Reich.

In the first half of the year, we cried with the rest of America in mid-June when a bigot terrorist gunned down a Bible study group he'd been sitting with for about an hour in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.

The 21-year-old shooter liked to be photographed with emblems associated with white supremacy, and he confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.

What his action prompted instead was a sustained effort to tear down the Confederate battle flags flying over too many Southern statehouses, along with the removal of statues of Confederate generals whose own slave-owning proclivities made them unfit to be idolized.

As if mass shootings and terrorism were not enough, 2015 also was a year when inequality past and present was often pointed up in questionable practices by police: Freddie Gray, whose spinal cord was severed during a police van ride after he was taken into custody; Linwood "Ray" Lambert, tazed repeatedly while handcuffed and on the ground and in the back of a police cruiser; Sandra Bland, who failed to signal a lane change and was found hanging in a jail cell three days later; 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot by police in Cleveland, Ohio; Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by one officer as McDonald moved away. The list goes on.

In some of the cases police were indicted or charged. In others, they were officially cleared of wrongdoing because they followed police procedures. No matter the outcome, what is obvious is that police procedures - and training - need far more review.

Then there are the guns themselves - the tools of much of this sorrow.

Tennessee lawmakers saw fit - thanks to National Rifle Association lobbying - to strip city and county government bans of guns in public places like parks and ball fields. Our lawmakers, however, didn't themselves feel safer with the idea of also allowing guns in the state capitol - an amendment to the bill that would eventually invalidate a 2009 law giving local officials the authority to establish gun-free parks. Some lawmakers included the provision to allow firearms in the state house as a "poison pill," but the amendment failed and the bill passed.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriage across the country came out of a case in four states, including Tennessee. The ruling came after a majority of citizens of this country had long-since decided that consenting adults who love each other, regardless of their gender, should be free to marry. It was a case of laws catching up with attitudes.

Tennessee lawmakers again showed their backwardness in 2015, however, when they failed to allow a full vote on Republican Gov. Bill Haslam's Insure Tennessee program - a Tennessee hybrid version of Obamacare that would expand health insurance access in the Volunteer State while the federal government paid for it. It was partisan- and pound-foolishness at its worst and most blatant.

On an international scale, climate cubed was a clear top newsmaker.

First, President Obama announced a climate pact with China. Then, the Paris climate deal agreed to by nearly 200 nations upped the ante. Third, 2015 came to an end with the dubious global title of hottest year on record. The Paris pact may not be enough, but at least it is a start.

In this year of heartbreak, the climate agreements offer - at long last - a glimmer of hope.