2026: The Year Of Clarity

2026 is the year of clarity. All the veils are going to fall. People are going to show you who they are.

That can be frightening. Sometimes it’s difficult to deal with the realities of life, the realities of people you once trusted, showing themselves to be something else. It can also be surprising and heartening because sometimes people show themselves to be a lot better than you thought they were.

But this year, events in the United States and the world more broadly are going to unmask nearly everyone.

Why?

Because we are on the precipice of something pretty big. And when big things happen, when the world becomes more chaotic, people reveal themselves. Adversity reveals character.

And we’re about to experience some adversity as Americans.

Where will that adversity come from? It could come from the international sphere. Adversity may spring from China’s authoritarian ambitions against Taiwan, or its global desire to expand power bases from Africa to Latin America. Already, we’ve seen some politicians and commentators shying away from revealing the realities about China, fearful that doing so could undercut their delusional vision of a world in which America in retreat is somehow good rather than harmful.

Adversity could arise from the continued conflict between Russia and Ukraine, or from Russia’s growing ambitions in the region as well as globally. Many figures are already revealing themselves in their views of Russia, often evidencing shocking blindness toward what Russia is, what Russia wants, up to and including full-scale propagandizing on behalf of a tyrannical regime steeped in hatred toward the values of the United States.

Adversity could come from Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and international terrorism, or its desperate desire to stave off internal regime change, or from its propaganda arms in Qatar and elsewhere, pushing anti-Western, anti-American bull****.

Many politicians and commentators are already showing themselves willing to do anything and everything on behalf of such regimes, up to and including flying cover for radical Islam.

Adversity might emanate from chaos in our southern hemisphere — where rogue states like Venezuela were pursuing deeper relations with our enemies until President Trump acted — or from Europe, where unchecked immigration combined with regulatory overreach threatens to doom an entire continent to stagnation and disarray.

It could come from any other variety of sources on the foreign front.

The world is a chaotic place. It’s a more chaotic place when America is weak, as many on the Left and the Right wish to make it.

Adversity could arise domestically, too. Adversity may come in the form of economic turmoil. While the economy right now appears to be in pretty good shape, no one knows how the current AI investment cycle will play out in the short term.

And economic turmoil brings with it political vultures. Already, we’ve seen some conservatives turning away from the defense of free markets in favor of statism. That seems more familiar from the Left, and we see leftists embracing the most extreme versions of wealth seizure and collectivist centralization.

Adversity will certainly originate in the size and scope of our massive and bureaucratic government, which provides extraordinary obstacles to American achievement and overwhelming support to people who are willing to steal from their fellow Americans.

Adversity will certainly come, too, in the form of reactionary posturing. Lies told by the Left will be mirrored in lies told by the Right and vice versa, resulting in a continued spiral of conspiratorial polarization, totally disconnected from the actual lives of most Americans. Already, we’ve seen cynical politicians and morally corrupt commentators spew untruths in pursuit of algorithmic momentum, and that is definitely going to accelerate this year.

Politicians and commentators reveal themselves in how they react to adversity. Do they react by telling you the truth, no matter how much their audience might dislike it? Or do they lie to you by telling you the things they think you want to hear? Do they react out of principle or out of convenience? Do they recommend coalition solidarity at the expense of basic decency, integrity, and truth?

In other words, do they treat you like a sucker or do they treat you like a citizen?

Of course, it’s an election year, and that means that we’re going to be swamped by lies and prevarication, by a lot of politicians who promise the moon and deliver nothing. We’ll be swamped, too, by commentators who suggest that political failure results from a general lack of Nietzschean will, rather than the complicated give and take of normal day-to-day politics. And they will argue that if you get more outraged, conspiratorial, and angry, somehow our politics will improve.

How will we Americans react to that adversity, that onslaught of cultivated resentment and Machiavellian manipulation?

The American republic is founded, on the one hand, in a fundamental supposition that human beings are capable of discernment, of acting morally when faced with adversity, of preferring truth to comforting falsehood, and of recognizing our own fallibility.

On the other hand, the American republic is also founded on the reality of the darker side of human nature — our tribalism, our venality, our selfishness.

All of which, when put together, is why our Founders preferred a republic of checks and balances rather than a Francoist dictatorship or a purer democracy.

It’s why James Madison wrote in Federalist 51:

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? 

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

In the end, it’s up to us. We have to become better at discernment. We have to act with humility.

We, the American people, must discern who is telling us the truth, even when we don’t want to hear it, and who is lying to us out of audience capture or political expediency or sycophancy. We have to work to preserve the checks and balances of our system, even checks and balances that might seem to deprive us of temporary power.

If we don’t, we risk an authoritarian centralization that turns against basic freedom. What’s more, we risk an arrogance about our own nature that surely turns to disaster, even if our side seems to have that temporary upper hand.

Most of all, we have to remember this: People who promise utopia, an end to adversity, an end to the chaos and turmoil of life, so long as you give them your trust and your power, are providing you a Faustian bargain in which you receive neither utopia nor freedom.

Those who tell you that your future is not in your hands, and who encourage you to surrender whatever is left of that future to a demoralizing conspiracism, are lying to you, and they are lying to you for their own gain.

You deserve better than that. We all deserve better than that.

So let 2026 be a year of clarity.

Let people reveal themselves for who they are and believe them when they show you.

And may we all approach the adversities of whatever comes our way with the courage, conviction, and decency that make America truly great.