The new year is well underway. Welcome to our terrible, awful, no-good, prospects for 2026, a quarterly report on an America that may be “getting tired of winning.”
In a flash we killed two citizens in Minneapolis and invaded a sovereign nation for its oil, under pretext that a very bad man needed to go. Such baddies are all over the world but few have oil, hence garnering much attention and overwhelmed with an impressive show of force, i.e., like shooting fish in a barrel—thus creating a distraction from the Epstein files. Trump’s quest for a Nobel Peace prize continues by starting wars, a rather counterintuitive way to go about it. And Little Marco Rubio, with whom the Donald once traded belittling comments regarding certain parts of their anatomies, is firmly in the latter’s pocket.
But, wait, there’s more: No one really understands A.I. except that it will change our world and along the way take our jobs and make our lives one big retirement plan. A.I. will generate wealth–but for whom? For sure, it won’t be spread all around.
Keep in mind that what started around the Tigris-Euphrates and in ancient Egypt has never changed. There were smart people and there were those less smart, and control of water was the big issue. The smart ones thought up the means of production but needed labor to make it happen. Then the smarties used warriors and security forces to force the strong to work for next to nothing—and a religious class to tell them not to worry, that it was all the will of the gods. Nothing has changed up to now. There will always be smarties that are morally bankrupt and think it all belongs to them.
There was no reason for the smarties to hold overwhelming wealth and leave workers with little to nothing. They needed each other, but the workers were robbed of livelihood and dignity. It was greed, plain and simple and it goes on forever. Whatever there is to have after A.I. is king, don’t expect everyone to benefit.
Then there’s the violence we’ve all come to love. Check your preferred entertainments and note that you’re seeing someone saying, threatening and doing terrible things to other people which, it turns out, is as addictive as fast food. Even our sports are extremely violent affairs because that’s what we’ve come to like.
Then the death of Charlie Kirk was a big, fat chance to get a handle on gun violence. We only pay attention when the worst happens to someone well loved, and Charlie had his many fans. But his death quickly became political. His widow, remarkably, chose not to hate his assassin–then wandered off-script to ordain JD Vance as Trump’s successor when she should have thrown her weight behind better gun laws. That could have been a game-changer. Instead, here we are again.
We could just run away from it all, which is what Elon Musk proposes: run to Mars—regardless the Red Planet has no water and the cost to get there, transform it, and make it sustain us over the long haul could be spent fixing the mess we’ve made here. If we don’t have the will to improve our own planet, why would we do better with Mars?
My list is longer but space is short. Less troubling is the “6,7” phenomenon ingeniously put on us by the young. It’s annoying to them that we imitate all their follies—mainly because we envy their youth. So they came up with the expression “6,7” which means nothing at all and, by cracky, they’ve got something there, and we don’t know what the hell to do about it. Expect more such brain twisters whilst we’re getting facelifts.
Our politics and other problems have been a long time in the making and we can’t seem to get a grip and that’ll take some doing.
Meanwhile, are you tired of winning? If not, don’t vote in November.
John Burciaga used to party when young and dashing. Now he stands at his door and yells, “Get off my lawn!” Yell at him at Ichabod142@gmail.com.