By Butch Freedman
So, here we are—2026. Scary but hopeful. If you’re still hanging on. Which I am, though with great trepidation. 2025 was such a brutal and outrageous slide for the country under Rump that I sometimes felt hopeless.
And, if you hadn’t noticed he’s still around, along with his cabinet of morons, each ready to take the next cruel step to prove their allegiance to the madman. BUT, the tide is changing, people are hurting and realizing where that hurt and suffering comes from. If an election were to happen today, I have no doubt that we’d boot the assholes out and into prison or obscurity and then strip the gold paint from the White House and begin to undo all the obscenities brought about by this out-of-control narcissist. Alas, that’s not going to happen, at least not for another three years.
In the MEANtime, I plan to ignore what I can, not get sucked into the daily morass of Trumpian outrage. He’s not worth my time or emotions. I don’t give a damn about his health or his cheating at golf, or his idiot children and wife, or even his grifting. It’s not new and not interesting. Sure, I’d love to see him held to account, as he should have been after 2020. In a just world, he’d be locked in a maximum-security prison for the rest of his ugly life. Isn’t that the accepted punishment for rapists and pedophiles? Not a pedophile, you say. Why do you think he so adamantly protested the release of the Epstein files? But, in this political era, with the Supreme Court packed with old men and right-wingers, all we can do is wait our turn. I am not saying to wait passively. Just the opposite. It’s time to do everything short of armed revolution to stop this horror show. Because otherwise, it’s only going to get worse. What happens if they manage to disrupt and fix the mid-terms? You know they’re working on it. Planning, scheming. We’re not dealing with fair play. Far from it.
We have to fight, but we also have to preserve our sanity. Trump is right about one thing—he has managed to drive us all crazy—Trump derangement syndrome. And he’s so proud of that—like a serial murderer is proud of his kills. So, let’s not fall for it. Let’s keep up the fight in ways that don’t bring us down. Let it not be personal. I don’t think that helps, and it makes us only more upset. The anger response is better suited to the Fox News people and the misogynist boy streamers and their followers. We have to laugh and play, dance and dream, while still doing the work of change.
Let’s all take a deep breath, remind ourselves that there’s a better day coming, and do the work to help it along. And (this is a hard one for me) stay positive. That’s what I hope for in 2026.
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