2016 ^hot^ - Fallen

October and November 2016 were dominated by the most shocking U.S. presidential election in modern history. The fall saw the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, FBI Director James Comey’s controversial letters about Hillary Clinton’s emails, and ultimately, the unexpected victory of Donald Trump over the favored Democratic candidate. Across the Atlantic, the fallout from the June Brexit vote continued to destabilize British politics, with Prime Minister Theresa May triggering Article 50 in March 2017—but the autumn was filled with legal challenges and economic uncertainty. In South Korea, President Park Geun-hye’s corruption scandal broke in October, leading to massive candlelight protests and her eventual impeachment in December—a dramatic fall from grace.

Looking back, “Fallen 2016” captures a psychological whiplash: the fall of political norms (the election), the fall of revered voices (the deaths), and the fall of environmental and digital stability (hurricanes and hacks). It was a season where the old order seemed to collapse, and the new one—uncertain, volatile—had not yet risen. For many, autumn 2016 remains a marker of when the world as they knew it ended, and a different, harder era began. fallen 2016

In September 2016, the world was still reeling from the uprisings of the Black Lives Matter movement following police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile earlier that summer. But autumn brought new flashpoints: the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock intensified in October and November, with thousands gathering in frigid conditions, leading to clashes with law enforcement. Meanwhile, a massive cyberattack in October—using the Mirai botnet—took down major websites like Twitter, Netflix, and PayPal across the U.S. East Coast, revealing the fragility of the internet’s infrastructure. October and November 2016 were dominated by the