Few of us could have been surprised by Romeo Dallaire's moving article in The Globe this weekend commenting on the tragedy of Lionel Desmond, the former soldier with PTSD who murdered his family then took his own life. Lt.-Gen. Dallaire, now retired, is surely among Canada's most admired citizens, if not the most admired. I include myself among his ardent fans, and I hope that 2017 might be the time he finally escapes from the demons that have haunted him for the past 23 years. Lionel Desmond's ghastly case only stirs up those ghosts.

The Prime Minister dispatched Governor General David Johnston to the Middle East recently on a mission that largely wasted everybody's time.

The GG was instructed to articulate the government's position favouring the creation of an independent Palestine living in peace next to Israel: "a two-state solution and a just, long-standing and comprehensive peace."

The GG's tour, so the media were informed, is part of the Liberal government's effort to "recalibrate" Canada's policy in the Middle East. Justin Trudeau promises a more "balanced" position after a decade of Pavlovian Conservative support for Israel in any and all circumstances.

Fidel Castro stands in a long line of great socialist leaders who betrayed socialism. The list pretty well includes all of them, from Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, to Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai, to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, to Mengistu in Ethiopia.

In the name of the beloved masses, these revolutionaries became the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for genocide, famine, incalculable suffering, widespread torture and the deaths of tens of millions of workers for the crime of somehow displeasing their great leader.

Castro was not a mass murderer of the same order, though hundreds, maybe thousands, of opponents were executed in the early years. He also broke the hearts of the millions of Cubans who welcomed his revolution.

The reward of being a congenital pessimist is that one is rarely disappointed. Bad news is always around the next corner, just wait. But at least anticipating the worst often softens the blow when the worst arrives, as it so often does.

Attentive readers of this space may recall that in column after lugubrious column, I kept warning that Donald Trump could still pull it off. This was long after most pundits and pollsters were complacently counting him out. How desperately I wish I'd been wrong.