Facing The New Year
How do we approach this new year of 2026? Yes, we had our traditional celebrations to ring in the new year, but how many of us shuddered inwardly when we thought of all that could happen in 2026? China is poised to attack Taiwan. Europe is seriously preparing for war with Russia. Iran is in turmoil. North Korea is again acting unpredictably. The words “World War III” get louder and louder as they swirl around us.
If all those potential crises aren’t enough, President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has changed everything. We shouldn’t naively believe that his decision won’t have global ramifications. Will Trump’s act encourage China to make a similar moved against Taiwan? Has his action legitimized Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and, perhaps, other Eastern European countries? Will Trump’s decision encourage him to invade Greenland, Iran, or other nations in Latin America?
Anyone who has lived through an earthquake will remember those first seconds when the ground shifted under our feet. Fear wasn’t an option. We didn’t know how long the shocks and aftershocks would last. We didn’t know if we’d be safer outside or inside. We worried about family members; were they safe or buried beneath a building or bridge?
Whether the earthquake is an actual event or a metaphor for the political uncertainty of our world, fear is a natural response. Our heart rate increases, our breathing becomes shallower, and adrenaline surges through our bodies.
Those responses to uncertainty pose a problem. For humans, fear and normality don’t go together. I doubt if anyone has ever said, “I’d like more fear and anxiety in my life.” What we want in our normal lives is stability. That doesn’t mean that we oppose all change, but it does mean that we prefer change to happen gradually. Sudden, unexpected events like earthquakes and invasions are shocks to the system.
The question then becomes, are there alternatives to fear and anxiety so that we act rather than react to the chaos around us?
Given that catastrophes have always been part of human history, we shouldn’t be surprised that our ancestors have left us with diverse ways of dealing with fear and anxiety. One ancient response to fear and anxiety is to believe in fate. In this view, everything that happens is predestined to happen. Humans can’t change what happens, but they can find peace by accepting that whatever happens is God’s will.
Some of our ancestors took the opposite position. They believed that we are in control of what happens in our lives. In this view, the invasion of Venezuela didn’t have to happen. It happened because of Maduro’s policies and President Trump’s decision to invade Venezuela as a response. In this view, history is what humans make it.
I favor a position that is between determinism and complete freedom. Many of us have heard this bit of wisdom—that we aren’t in control of what happens to us, but we are in control of our response to it.
While this can sound like a cheap, feel-good platitude, I believe it captures something vital about democracies. In the short-term, voters in our country had as little say in President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela as Russians did in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. There is, however, a difference. In the 2026 off-year elections, American voters will either endorse Trump’s policies or reject them. Yes, each voter in our democracy has only one vote, but taken together, our votes will either give Trump the green light to do whatever he wants, or they will force him to stop. Similarly in 2028, American voters will decide either to accept Trump’s aggressive foreign policies or reject them as a betrayal of America’s historic role in the world. In the meantime, each of us can let our senators and representatives know where we stand—not just once but with every new development.
All the signs suggest that much can happen in 2026 that will tempt us to feel paralyzed and powerless. Let’s resist that temptation and be the citizens of our democracy that our Founding Fathers and Mothers hoped we would be.