Barbara Mezeske: Slam the door on 2025
This has been a year of disbelief: What was thought impossible has transpired.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.
This has been a year of disbelief: What was thought impossible has transpired.
Ten to 11 percent of the total federal workforce left their jobs through layoffs, firings, and as a result of DOGE bullying. One-third of the physical structure of the White House has been demolished. Masked and armed troops have been sent into our cities, creating terror and disruption. Children have been zip-tied in the middle of the night in our names, by troops paid with our tax dollars. Our country has alienated former allies and rolled out the red carpet — figuratively and literally — to Russia. Family budgets have been upended by tariffs. Our military has embraced whiteness while erasing the records of anyone not white or male.
The speed of these many impossibilities takes our collective breath away. Which battle does one fight when surrounded by battles? Which outrage gets submerged in the adrenaline triggered by the next outrage?
Our government is broken: Two of the three branches are complicit in all that happened in 2025. If 2026 is to be better, the burden is on us, individually and collectively.
The first step is to foreground what this regime has done. Be persuaded by action, not by words. Beware of promises, even if those promises are what you want to hear. Don’t be like Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who was assured by RFK Jr. in his confirmation hearings that he would not deviate from long-accepted vaccine protocols. Oops. RFK Jr. fired all 17 members of the CDC’s advisory committee on vaccination and packed that committee with vaccine deniers. He removed the statement that there is no link between vaccines and autism from the CDC website. Don’t believe what you hear: When someone, even your president, tells you that affordability is a Democratic hoax, check your wallet.
The second step is to recognize deflection. Donald Trump, and many other important and powerful men, may have engaged in years-long sexual predation on young girls. The government could release all of the Epstein files with redactions only of victims’ names, or it could launch a CIA drone attack on a Venezuelan dock. Or maybe on some alleged ISIS camp in Nigeria. “Don’t look there! Look here!”
The third step is to question what our representatives want to talk to us about. U.S. Rep. When Bill Huizenga (R-Holland Twp.) laments political violence after the Charlie Kirk assassination, force him to comment on the deaths of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, or the fire bombing of the home of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. When he blames Democrats for the 43-day government shutdown, ask him why he got paid while others, including military families, were forced to use food banks. Even if the rhetoric is what you consider old-fashioned, good politics, look past that. Make them talk about what is happening, not about old platitudes.
As 2026 begins, we face dire challenges.
Maintaining law and order is one. Does a regime support law and order if it pardons all 1,500 people charged or convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S Capitol building? Do we have a lawful society when ICE agents can arrest, assault, and detain people and face no consequences if their victims were citizens, or green card holders, or in the process of working through the immigration system? If the regime transports kidnapped people across state or national lines with no due process, how is that lawful or orderly? If our government is responsible for detention conditions so terrible that 60 Minutes is prevented from airing an investigation, can we claim to be on the right side of history?
Climate change is a second battleground. Clean air and water are not political footballs. Why have EPA rules on PFAS in drinking water been rolled back? Why is the regime forcing old coal plants like the Consumers Campbell facility to remain open — at a loss of $600,000 per day, not to mention spewing pollution all over West Michigan (Environmental Defense Fund 11/19/25)? Who benefits from the old, ignorant, polluting ways except those who own and operate the old, ignorant, polluting technologies that should be phased out?
Education is under seige. Universities have capitulated to the regime in hopes of retaining federal funding by curtailing academic freedom and weeding out “anti-government content” in courses and libraries. If something is “woke,” it is likely censored or defunded. That includes research that mentions gender or race, or history that paints us in an unflattering light. We can’t examine if race affects childbirth, or if women’s pain differs from men’s, or if the Japanese internment in WWII was necessary. Human service professions like nursing, public health, physical therapy, and social work have been downgraded and are no longer eligible for federal loans. The Department of Education is on its way out, funding drained, oversight abandoned.
The post-World War II international order is upended. We have betrayed and antagonized former allies like Canada and Europe. We have ended all “soft power” foreign aid initiatives by dismantling USAID. We celebrate authoritarians like Viktor Orban and mistreat democratic leaders like Volodymyr Zelensky. We have lost trust and thereby ceded our former leadership of democratic societies. New trade and military alliances are forming, without us. Turns out, the West has discovered they don’t need us as much as we thought.
Our nation is an international pariah, festooned with gold decoration. The redesigned Oval Office, the Presidential Walk of Fame with its snarky plaques, the re-named Kennedy Center: All of it at the whim of one man. All of it epitomized by the A.I. meme released by the White House in which “King Trump” pilots a military jet that drops human feces on “No Kings” protestors. No dignity. Just pettiness and graft.
We who are alive at the start of 2026 have no choice but to move forward. But we do have a choice about what that looks like in our little worlds. Money to donate, even if times are tight? Marches to join, even if the local media looks away? Letters to write, not expecting a reply? Phone calls and emails to make? We must do every bit of this, as we are able.
But most of all, we must vote these irresponsible, un-American politicians out of our lives. Don’t be lulled by last-minute regrets expressed by those who went along with it all. Don’t be seduced by “I’ll do better this time” promises. Make them all accountable. Make them pay for 2025.
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