Hopes that this new year would enter peacefully were probably always foolish. It's a perennial wish, but one we should acknowledge as more dream than expectation if we're being honest with ourselves about the state of our nation and our world.

Both sides of the new year's onset were wracked with violence.

Regionally, a man was pushed onto the subway tracks at the 18th Street station on the No.1 line in Manhattan on New Year's Eve, and 10 people were shot outside a nightclub in Queens on Jan. 1.

Nationally, at least 14 people were killed in New Orleans when a U.S. Army veteran intentionally drove a pickup truck into New Year's Eve revelers, and an active duty Green Beret master sergeant killed himself and blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Jan. 1.

Add in the fatal pre-Christmas car attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany; the shooting of six people in the Bronx on Dec. 30; and the horrific........

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