A happy new year to you all. There is much you can do with thinking through a New Year’s column.

In review, 2017 was a tumultuous year. Our politics were fractious. Republicans failed to legislatively disassemble Obamacare but then succeeded in their tax reform.

President Trump and the news media were at war. James Comey at the FBI was fired, triggering the Mueller investigation into Russian collusion which grinds on. The Justice Department is accused of tanking an investigation into the Clinton emails and accusations about “pay to play” with the sale of Uranium One to the Russians. Neil Gorsuch goes to the Supreme Court.

Internationally, North Korea intensified as a nuclear threat and China rose in influence. There was worsening unrest in Yemen and Iran, and the U.S. embassy plans to move to Jerusalem. The biggest story perhaps is the near total destruction of ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

In 2017, the United States suffered hurricanes and wildfires. Racial tensions persist. Opioid-related deaths mounted. There was Howard Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Al Franken, Kevin Spacey and Judge Roy Moore. We had terror attacks, and the awful dark insanity of the Las Vegas mass shooting.

Last year, the Patriots won the greatest Super Bowl comeback of all times, and the Houston Astros won a Cinderella World Series. The Academy Awards were embarrassed by announcing the wrong winner for best film.

Making predictions for the coming year is fun to do. I take the Patriots over Minnesota in the Super Bowl, and then Tom Brady announces his retirement. The New York Yankees will crush Major League Baseball in a barrage of home runs harkening back to the great Yankee teams of the 1960s.

Even though I haven’t seen it, “The Post” will win the Academy Award simply because it is about an iconic liberal news outlet, The Washington Post, taking on the power of a conservative government, starring Meryl Streep as a woman who comes to terms with her authority. The Academy Awards won’t be able to resist this. My choices for the best film in 2017 otherwise go to “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbings, Missouri,” “Lady Bird” or the remarkably brilliant animated “Loving Vincent.”

Trying to predict events in politics or international affairs is a fool’s errand. There are simply too many complexities and moving parts. Perhaps the best approach is to hope for some peace and equanimity and an absence of unpleasant surprises in 2018.

I want to take the transition from 2017 to 2018 to reflect on writing on the editorial pages of this particular newspaper in this particular locality and its politics. Most of the columns here are political in nature, and it is obvious that I write a column that is moderately conservative and that the great predominance of columns and letters written on these pages are politically very liberal.

I am hesitant in making the following observation about many of those other entries, and I truly hope this is taken in the constructive manner in which it is meant. Much is written on these pages reflecting a visceral hatred of the current president using language that is extraordinary in its venom. Just last week a writer likened the president to Dante’s circles of hell and the Trump administration to Nazi Germany. Another writer described Republican politics as a “war on the American people.” There is at times an extremism and repetitiveness among these writings that will only speak to those who share that hatred. Reading some of these columns and letters seems like those authors are yelling in an echo chamber.

Yes, of course the current federal government with Republicans in power takes positions that are contrary to those of liberals. It was not that very long ago that the federal government had Democrats in power with policies that were contrary to conservative positions. That is the way of democracy. It is completely appropriate to disagree with policies and positions, but perhaps it would be useful to take a deep breath and separate those disagreements from hyperbolic personal attacks, and to remember that there are large swaths of the American public who agree with the policies that those on the left find unacceptable.

In the space between reviewing the events of the year past and anticipating the near future is a moment to pause and think about important matters that are not political. The new year is an opportunity to be thankful for the people who share our lives: for family and friends, co-workers and colleagues. It is a chance to be thankful for work. As a physician, I have the good fortune of never having to end my day thinking that I’ve wasted my time.

At the point of moving from one year to the next, it is important to remember that the most valuable commodity we have is certainly not money, but is time. It is also a chance to be thankful for simply being alive. Life is this remarkable phenomenon, an inestimable gift.

Those among us who had have problems or losses in their family or with their friends, those who have difficulty providing economically, and those who are in poor or perilous health should get our thoughts for the new year. For you, a happy new year.

Jay Fleitman, M.D., of Northampton writes a monthly column. He can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.