Looking for Hope in 2026

On rage, numbness, and refusing to disconnect

I had a plan. I would write a “Happy New Year” post, talking about how so many of the patterns I witnessed in 2025 actually make me optimistic for 2026. Then on January 3rd, the U.S. bombed Venezuela and abducted their authoritarian leader. Following the very familiar imperial American playbook of the 20th Century. Destabilizing a region for oil and potentially starting a war really knocked the wind out of my sails. It didn’t feel appropriate to write about optimism.

So I regathered my thoughts, reframed them and as soon as I was to set pen to paper (or fingers to laptop keys), a masked ICE agent shot and killed American citizen Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. I watched the horrifying videos and my heartache and fury grew as Trump and Noem and Vance (and their Republican toadies) went on TV to tell us all not to believe what we could see with our own eyes.

I can’t shake the feeling that some of this media churn is meant to deflect our attention from the Epstein files. As cyber-sleuths and journalists dig into those millions of pages, things look worse and worse for Trump and so many other powerful men.

I feel so angry and powerless in these moments. My body tenses up and I shut down emotionally. Any response I can have feels too small. Screaming on the internet and even marching in the streets is not going to change the situation. Even the Mayor of Minneapolis and the Governor of Minnesota seem to have no power against a federal administration who cares nothing for the rule of law. It seems as if the only real plan that Democrats have is to say the words “fuck” and “bullshit” on television. That is not action. And so I freeze and escape into a novel or television show where I can feel safe. Where the forces of good and evil are more clearly defined. Where I know there will be a happy ending.

I start my second semester of grad school today, so this has become a “Back-to-School” post. At least studying Social Work surrounds me with people who by definition care about other people. We can all feel helpless together in the macro sense while doing what we can on a micro scale to help.

But the thing is, despite all of this, I do feel hopeful in a way for 2026. There will be midterm elections this fall (barring some Trumpist fuckery), which will almost definitely flip the majority of the House. It is my hope (and based on the 2025 elections, a trend) that younger, more progressive people will be voted into office. The boomer generation will not give up power on their own, we need to vote them out and hopefully bring some teeth back to the legislative branch.

Trump’s health is failing. I used to say that I wouldn’t wish death on anyone, but now I wish that I believed in hell because there are so many people in our current news cycle who should have seats reserved there. I notice myself reaching for rumors and prophecies in moments like this, the year of the horse (2025 was the year of the snake where we shed our skin). The Peruvian shamans who predicted the downfall of Maduro also predict a Trump will “fall seriously ill.” I don’t necessarily believe in astrology or predictions by shamans… but a girl can hope.

In 2025, there were two pieces of popular culture that seemingly came out of nowhere and became worldwide cultural phenomena. I’m of course talking about K-Pop Demon Hunters and Heated Rivalry. Virtually no marketing went into either of these properties. Sony Animation practically gave Demon Hunters away to Netflix because they didn’t think they could find a market for it, and Heated Rivalry was a small Canadian production which only got U.S. distribution (from HBO Max) a week or so before it was set to premier. And yet audiences found both of these pieces and connected with them in ways the entertainment industry did not see coming.

It is no accident that both of these properties come from minority voices and are ultimately about self-acceptance. I believe that society at large feels so disconnected from ourselves, from each other, and from nature, that we gravitated in a primal, emotional way to art that a) was about becoming whole, b) made us feel connected to people on the internet and around the world, and c) as art has told us for millennia, illustrates that love always wins.

The neoliberal world order, as constructed by the ultra-wealthy and the governments they empower over the last few centuries, needs us to feel disconnected and alone in order to keep enriching the billionaires and keeping the status quo in place, but I believe nature has other ideas. As I’ve said before, the reality of nature is interconnectedness, and culture is one way to reinforce the natural connections between disparate groups of people.

The other thing giving me hope this year is Zohran Mamdani in New York City. I know he’s been in power for less than 2 weeks, but some of the changes he’s ALREADY made in New York City, are going to bring meaningful change to that populace. I wish him continued success, mostly so that he can prove that Democratic Socialism can work, despite what wealthy propagandists have been trying to deny for a while. It is my belief that Mamdani is a bellwether who will bring many more Democratic Socialists to office in the coming years. It is an ideology that insists on connection and reciprocity, and is therefore more aligned with nature than our current systems.

Nature is cyclic. Night always follows day, summer always follows spring, decay always follows growth and so on. In human society, there is only one cycle that appears over and over again throughout our history: Wealth and power become concentrated by the few, and eventually the many rise up to restore balance. We see this in the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the creation of the Magna Carta in 1215, the American Revolution followed shortly by the French Revolution in the 18th century, the New Deal and the Civil Rights movements of the 20th.

In the book The Fourth Turning by Neil Howe and William Strauss, these historic cycles are explored in what they name as “turnings.” According to the book (which does have its critics) The Fourth Turning is always the end of the cycle and is always brought on by crisis. The cycle generally lasts 80-120 years and the last fourth turning ended with World War II, so we are due for a new cycle any day now.

I do believe that things are going to get worse before they get better, but I also believe that a better day is coming. Nature doesn’t restore balance politely. It restores it through pressure, through seasons, through cleansing fire, collapse and regrowth. Humans are not exempt from that. I do think that 2026 (or as I joked on New Year’s Eve, “The 250th and final year of America”) is taking us to a boiling point. Change is coming because it must. What that change looks like is up to us. So here’s my back-to-school intention: one breath, one conversation, one act of care at a time. May we move towards connection, towards love, towards justice. I don’t know how 2026 will end, but I suspect it will be better than how it began. And if not, at least we have a new Robyn album coming this spring.