The vast majority of Americans find the status quo poisonous. This is the inevitable blowback from decades of misguided bipartisan policies that have destroyed our country. From never-ending invasions, regime-change ops and sanctions, to ruinous financialization, to the steady outsourcing of American manufacturing resulting in the immiseration of American workers and destruction of the middle-class.

All of our recent elections have been protest ones yet nothing seems to change. Prices continue to skyrocket, Israel and the neocons continue to steer US foreign policies of endless war and, now, a national AI program supported by both parties that threatens millions of jobs. I joke to friends that we’d be better off if Putin and Russia, or Xi Jinping and China invaded and took over management of the country from the present bipartisan kleptocracy.

Hah, hah.

John Michael Greer sounds a message of hope but also peril –“As the last hours of 2025 slip away and 2026 dawns, then, I see the first stirrings of an unnoticed landscape of possibility. That is balanced, however, by certain equally unnoticed dangers. A crucial fact about the fascist regimes of the early 20th century that all sides have gone out of their way to suppress is that a great many of them seized power by offering electorates the commonsense policies that everyone outside the political class wanted and none of the established parties would discuss. That’s why the 25-Point Program of the Nazi party, for example, demanded such bland and reasonable steps as government food subsidies for pregnant women and children, reforms to make education available to all, and the expansion of old age pensions.

The bitter events of a century ago show clearly enough that if the elites in charge of democratic political systems insist on the preservation of an intolerable status quo in the teeth of widespread popular dissent, the people will turn to anybody who will overthrow the existing system—even if that means accepting jackboots and armbands. I can only hope that enough people in the political classes recognize what is happening in time to move to the center first, and prevent a repeat of that ghastly experience.”

I hope 2026 is the year when a critical mass of Americans change the status quo for the better.

Stay safe.

Update: Matt Stoller offers words of encouragement. “It was during that time of great cynicism that the imbalances and corruption unmasked in the 1930s built up. Only when the public recovered its ability to be outraged, to believe in collective action, that Americans could once again see their society as a free people and act upon it. The actual economic collapse started in 1929, and it continued and worsened even as Brandeis became more optimistic. It was the public learning and regaining its liberty that had to come before the material part could be fixed.”