A Prayer for '26

Our nation and our world stand at an inflection point in history, faced with divergent paths into our shared future. Along one path, leaders seek to wield hatred, division, and fear as tools to advance their agendas and those of an entrenched oligopoly. Along another, a disenfranchised populace yearns to move forward with compassion, unity, and a common purpose. I refuse to believe that common ground has vanished. What I see instead is a world where the vast majority of people are good, respectful, and hardworking. People simply doing their best to survive day-to-day. Yet we have been turned against one another by forces beyond and above us, intent on sustaining false divisions where none truly exist. Political, religious, ethnic, racial, economic, and consumerist lines are just a few of the many ways we are artificially separated and set in opposition to one another.

What must change is not merely who occupies positions of power, but how power itself is understood and exercised. We must reject systems that reward cruelty, dishonesty, and corruption at the expense of human dignity, and instead demand structures that value transparency, accountability, and shared responsibility. The machinery of division does not run on ideology alone; it runs on apathy, exhaustion, and the quiet acceptance of injustice as inevitable. To change course, we must reassert the radical notion that people matter more than profits, that truth matters more than convenience, and that democracy is a responsibility we all share and must actively defend. This requires us to listen across differences, to refuse dehumanization even when it is expedient, and to dismantle narratives that tell us our neighbors are our enemies while absolving those who benefit most from our fragmentation.

If we commit to this change, the outcome is not some naïve utopia, but something far more powerful and attainable: a society capable of addressing our greatest problems. A future built on cooperation rather than coercion allows innovation to flourish, communities to heal, and institutions to regain legitimacy through service rather than dominance. In such a world, disagreement becomes a source of insight instead of violence, and diversity becomes a strength rather than a wedge. We would find that the common ground we were told no longer exists was merely buried, not destroyed, waiting for us to clear away the debris of prejudice and reclaim it together. That future is not promised. It is not easy. But it is still possible. It begins the moment we choose one another over the forces that profit from keeping us apart. When we abandon our talking points in favor of critical thinking and honest conversations. When we mutually engage in creating a world and a future that we can all share in and be proud of.

1💖JT