Nahhhhh.
Biblical comparisons aren't really our thing.
It has been a relentlessly strange year, though. Untimely deaths. Chaos everywhere. The Cubs winning the World Series. And it all seemed to culminate in Trump's unexpected presidential win in November.
His victory over Hillary Clinton has taught many of us to finally abandon our once-practical expectation that events will play out as they always have.
Yet, at the same time, news stories, shifts in cultural tones and political memes that surfaced over the year were so bizarre that, viewed together, they look more like a string of seals, er, signs of what was to come.
Shall we begin?
Seal 1: The massive rallies
Well before he even won the Republican primary, thousands of people would drive for hours in order to pack arenas to see Trump speak. He would go on for at least an hour trashing his enemies — Clinton, the media, whoever else he was feuding with that week — in a stream-of-consciousness rant containing little substance beyond the famous Mexico border wall, which got taller every time he talked about it.
Though rally after rally drew capacity crowds, media outlets clung to the conventional wisdom that large crowds don't translate to a win on Election Day. After all, wasn't it Mitt Romney who consistently pulled 10,000-plus to rallies in the weeks leading up to his 2012 loss to one Barack Obama?
But this was different.
From his first Tampa rally at the USF Sun Dome, where fans lined up for hours sporting handmade signs bedecked with candy hearts and festooning themselves in Trumpesque accoutrements, we should have known better.
It was a cult of personality, powered by hatred of an obvious enemy — stepped-up political pageantry put on by a man who knew more about pageantry than politics, and won in part because of it.
Seal 2: Dick jokes
Even before 2016 showed up with a stick of dynamite in its teeth, Trump brought a level of boorishness to the Republican primary no one had previously thought possible. At first glance it seemed little more than comic relief for people who probably weren't going to vote for the 17 or so people seeking the nomination anyway. But sometime around March, in an apparent effort to snag a little of the air Trump was sucking out of the room, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio decided he was going to make a funny about Trump having small hands because we all know what that means, amirite?
It prompted Trump to imply there was “no problem” with his manhood — “believe me!” — during an actual debate to help determine the next president of the United States.
Yes, Lil' Marco's lil' quip was a reminder of Graydon Carter's famous characterization of Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian” — reflecting the fact that Trump does indeed have tiny hands and doesn't much like it when that's brought up — and it's endured as a beloved meme ever since. And it ushered in the most late-night-comedy-ready election year we've ever seen.
But the attention was already on Trump, and the vulgarity — in which Trump seems to bask — only gave him more headlines, more earned media, more of a spotlight on the unconventionality an apparent majority of Americans crave in American politics.
Seal 3: Fake news
It's no surprise that PolitiFact's Lie of the Year was actually thousands of lies.
Social media was ablaze with total bullshit from the left and right from at least the beginning of the year. A money-maker for young male trolls firing off posts from Macedonia and the suburbs of Los Angeles, lies got more clicks than posts written by credible outlets obligated to adhere to industry standards. It was a year when the phrase “post-truth” became an apt descriptor of our current epoch.
Some might say Trump, with his long refusal to acknowledge that President Obama was born in the United States (then blaming the rumor-mongering on Clinton), is himself the paterfamilias of fake news.
Posts with headlines rehashing long-debunked Clinton murder conspiracies and accusing her of cheating during primary season proliferated among Trump supporters and fans of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whipping those on either side of Clinton into a fiction-fueled frenzy.
But traditional media, social sites and search engines were slow on the uptake and waited too long to call bullshit. By the time they began standing up to the apparently intentional misinformation, the election was almost over and the damage had been done.
Seal 4: Christ horn (evangelicals)
Speaking of bizarre alternate realities, the left is still bemused at the throngs of evangelical Christians who loved Trump from the beginning despite his coarse language and penchant for womanizing.
But when you base your worldview on something that can't be proven, ignoring inconvenient facts isn't exactly a stretch.
Trump won big among evangelical Christians, even though several bona fide Jesus freaks like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson were among his GOP primary contenders.
Sure, evangelicals would have voted for any Republican in the general over a women's-autonomy-defending Democrat, but for some, it goes beyond even that. Some evangelicals actually see Trump as a biblical figure. Namely, Cyrus, who in the book of Isaiah was a pagan king anointed by God to rebuild Jerusalem after it was destroyed by Babylonians decades earlier.
Evangelicals believe that Trump, whether or not he's a real Christian or whatever, is going to do exactly the same thing to America, and that the good lord hand-picked the guy to do his or her or its bidding, thus making America something-something.
We are not making this up.
Seal 5: The Cavening
Back in about March or so, it was somewhat entertaining to watch all the teeth-gnashing that was going on in the primaries, especially as mainstream Republicans were increasingly forced to grapple with the fact that a man who doesn't speak in full sentences and uses "bigly" like it's actually a word would be on track to become the face and voice of conservatism. John Boehner was probably on a beach somewhere thanking his lucky stars that he bailed on his House Speakership when he did. Trump's Florida win temporarily left Marco Rubio's career in shambles, and other primary candidates were quickly peeling away.
But Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus struggled to offer full-throated support even as it became more and more apparent that, barring some anomaly or diabolical maneuvering, Trump would be the nominee.
Cruz, perhaps the bitterest of his primary rivals, was loudly booed from the floor of the Republican National Convention when he urged Republicans to “vote your conscience.” Cruz endorsed Trump roughly two months later.
But even if most Republicans fell into line, Trump to this day has his GOP detractors, including the Bushes and even Glenn Beck.
Seal 6: The Grabbening
One would think it would have been the October surprise to end all October surprises. Or the Friday news dump to end all Friday news dumps.
Alas, this is 2016.
So, being a year that seems bent on outdoing itself, the infamous hot mic video of Trump cavalierly bragging about being so rich that he can go up to any woman he wants and she'll let him kiss her, grab her by her genitals (“grab 'em by the pussy,” to be exact), whatever, and she'll be totally fine with it.
It was such a holy shit moment that most people concluded that if it hadn't been totally in the bag for Clinton before, it was now.
How could anybody vote for someone who openly speaks of treating other human beings as chattel? Brags about it, even?
The same Republicans who were slow to embrace his candidacy sought to distance themselves from him, condemning his comments but not completely pulling their support.
Diehard Trump supporters, meanwhile, stood by their man. Some embraced the controversy. It made sense, given the machismo Trump represents.
Even some female Trump supporters embraced the phrase, despite it being yet another concrete demonstration of Donald Trump's attitude toward their gender.
But while his hardcore fans stuck with him, Trump tanked in the polls. With swing voters (who the hell are these people?!) by all estimates climbing on board for Clinton, this thing seemed like a done friggin’ deal.
Cue the universe, in a most Morgan Freeman-esque voice: It was not.
Seal 7: Zombie emails
It was the October surprise to end all October surprises. It was the Friday news dump to end all Friday news dumps. And it happened just as early voting had begun.
To this day, people still question why FBI director James Comey wrote a letter to Congress 11 days before Election Day that indicated they were looking into more emails associated with Clinton that they'd found on a private computer owned by disgraced former Congressman Anthony Wiener, whose then-wife Huma Abedin was a close aide to Clinton.
Voters already had trust issues with Clinton, which salacious and click-baity coverage of the development aimed to stoke. It seemed further proof for diehard Bernie Sanders supporters that he should have been the Democrats' nominee, not Clinton, and that their protest vote was justified.
And to those swing voters who may have been turned off by Trump's p-word-grabbing comments, the attempted resuscitation of the Clinton email scandal was the newer, shinier distraction.
Even though Clinton was cleared two days before Election Day, it was probably too late.
And thus, Trump will be our next president.
This article appears in Dec 29, 2016 – Jan 5, 2017.