A Note to Listeners

Before we begin the work of this new season, I want to pause—not to analyze, but to acknowledge.

What follows is not a policy argument, not a forecast, and not a debate brief. It is something rarer in public discourse: a moment of recognition. Because if you are listening to this, chances are you are tired. Not uninformed. Not disengaged. Tired.

We have just come through a year in which the language of inevitability was everywhere. You were told—repeatedly—that democracy is finished, that strongmen have won, that history has turned a corner and left ordinary people behind. You were shown wars, coups, and corruption, and invited to mistake accumulation for destiny. If that left you anxious, angry, or hollowed out, that response was not weakness. It was comprehension.

🎧 Listen to the narrated version of An Opening Message for 2026: Against the Fashion of Despair (7 minutes, 55 seconds).

Our work here has always been analytical. We look closely. We follow patterns. We trace power. That will not change. But analysis alone cannot carry the weight of this moment—not because it is insufficient, but because it is incomplete without acknowledgment of its human cost.

This opening is emotional because the year was emotional.

Democratic erosion is not addressed in any white paper. It is experienced as a constant hum of uncertainty: institutions that feel brittle, truths that feel negotiable, and a sense that decency is being treated as naïveté. To pretend that those conditions do not register emotionally is not objectivity; it is avoidance.

So let me say this plainly: if you have felt overwhelmed, you are not imagining things. If you have wondered whether caring is becoming a liability, you are responding to a culture that increasingly rewards cruelty and calls it realism. And if you have been tempted, even briefly, to disengage—not because you stopped believing, but because you were exhausted—that impulse deserves understanding, not judgment.

Here is the analytical truth beneath the emotion: what we are witnessing is not the end of democracy, but the collapse of a complacent version of it. One that asked too much patience from too many people while delivering too little dignity in return. The backlash was predictable. What remains undecided is what replaces it.

That undecided space is why we are here.

History does not only move through force and spectacle. It also moves through refusal—through people who decline to accept despair as wisdom, or exhaustion as surrender. Democracy has always depended on those people, even when they were out of fashion.

This season will examine institutions, power, and consequences with the same rigor as before. But it will do so without pretending to be untouched observers. We are citizens living inside the systems we are examining. Acknowledging that does not weaken the work. It grounds it.

If you feel seen by that distinction—analysis anchored in recognition, then you are exactly where you belong. Not because all will be well, but because the story is still open.

We begin 2026 not by predicting the future, but by refusing to give it away.

Against the Fashion of Despair

As this new year begins, you will hear a familiar refrain from those who claim to interpret the age for a living. They will tell you—again—that the liberal democratic order is finished. That optimism was naïve. That history has turned a corner, and power alone now decides the future. They will speak gravely, cite wars and autocrats, and invite you to adjust your expectations downward.

It will sound sophisticated. It will sound realistic. It will also be wrong.

What has ended is not democracy, but a particular version of it—one that mistook stability for justice and markets for legitimacy. The post–Cold War order promised political freedom while quietly eroding economic agency. It preserved elections while allowing inequality to metastasize. When people began to revolt against that arrangement, elites chose to call the revolt irrational rather than interrogate its cause.

Right-wing populism did not appear out of nowhere. It grew in the space left behind when liberal democracy stopped delivering tangible dignity. But acknowledging that failure does not require surrendering the future to strongmen. Fatalism is not realism; it is abdication.

History does not move in straight lines, and it does not belong exclusively to those who wield weapons. Empires project strength long after they rot internally. Democracies fracture loudly, visibly, and often chaotically—but that noise is not proof of death. It is proof of contestation. Living systems argue with themselves.

Look closely at the world you are told is collapsing. Across continents, younger generations are not demanding authoritarian rule; they are demanding accountability, opportunity, and voice. In Europe, far-right movements rise—and then stall, splinter, or lose when forced to govern. In the global South, protests erupt not in praise of oligarchy, but against corruption and exclusion. These are not the reflexes of a world that has given up on self-government.

What is ending is the illusion that democracy is self-executing—that it runs on autopilot, immune to neglect. That illusion was always false. Democratic legitimacy has always depended on whether people believed the system worked for them. When it didn’t, loyalty decayed. The surprise is not that anger arrived, but that it took so long.

Authoritarianism has one great advantage and one fatal weakness. Its advantage is speed: it can act without consent. Its weakness is sustainability: it must constantly manufacture enemies, spectacle, and fear to justify itself. When it fails to improve ordinary life—and most regimes eventually do—it fractures from within. Disappointment is its undoing.

Democracy, by contrast, is slow, frustrating, and maddeningly imperfect. But it has a regenerative capacity that autocracy lacks—if citizens choose to use it. That insistence is returning, unevenly but unmistakably. Industrial policy is back. Labor is organizing. Antitrust has re-entered the conversation. Younger voters are treating housing, healthcare, and climate stability not as abstract issues but as moral minimums. These are not signs of decay. They are signs of recalibration.

The next democratic order—if it succeeds—will not resemble the one we inherited in the 1990s. It will be less deferential to concentrated wealth and far less tolerant of performative institutions. It will place economic security at the center of democratic legitimacy, not off to the side as an afterthought. It will be louder, more demanding, and more honest about power.

That future is not guaranteed. Democracies can fail. But they do not fail because optimism was foolish. They fail because people are repeatedly told that nothing better is possible—and begin to believe it.

So, if you feel weary, cynical, or tempted to disengage, understand this: despair has become fashionable, but it is not neutral. It benefits those who prefer a tired public. Choosing to remain engaged is not naïve. It is a refusal to let others tell your story about your resignation.

The world is not ending. It is arguing with itself. And the outcome is still being written.

~Dunneagin

 Collected volumes are available on Kindle (Trump’s Big Top: How Politics Became a 3-Ring Circus) and Gumroad (The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy & Mr. Dunneagin Speaks, Vol. 2).

A Note to Listeners

Before we begin the work of this new season, I want to pause—not to analyze, but to acknowledge.

What follows is not a policy argument, not a forecast, and not a debate brief. It is something rarer in public discourse: a moment of recognition. Because if you are listening to this, chances are you are tired. Not uninformed. Not disengaged. Tired.

We have just come through a year in which the language of inevitability was everywhere. You were told—repeatedly—that democracy is finished, that strongmen have won, that history has turned a corner and left ordinary people behind. You were shown wars, coups, and corruption, and invited to mistake accumulation for destiny. If that left you anxious, angry, or hollowed out, that response was not weakness. It was comprehension.

🎧 Listen to the narrated version of An Opening Message for 2026: Against the Fashion of Despair (7 minutes, 55 seconds).

Our work here has always been analytical. We look closely. We follow patterns. We trace power. That will not change. But analysis alone cannot carry the weight of this moment—not because it is insufficient, but because it is incomplete without acknowledgment of its human cost.

This opening is emotional because the year was emotional.

Democratic erosion is not addressed in any white paper. It is experienced as a constant hum of uncertainty: institutions that feel brittle, truths that feel negotiable, and a sense that decency is being treated as naïveté. To pretend that those conditions do not register emotionally is not objectivity; it is avoidance.

So let me say this plainly: if you have felt overwhelmed, you are not imagining things. If you have wondered whether caring is becoming a liability, you are responding to a culture that increasingly rewards cruelty and calls it realism. And if you have been tempted, even briefly, to disengage—not because you stopped believing, but because you were exhausted—that impulse deserves understanding, not judgment.

Here is the analytical truth beneath the emotion: what we are witnessing is not the end of democracy, but the collapse of a complacent version of it. One that asked too much patience from too many people while delivering too little dignity in return. The backlash was predictable. What remains undecided is what replaces it.

That undecided space is why we are here.

History does not only move through force and spectacle. It also moves through refusal—through people who decline to accept despair as wisdom, or exhaustion as surrender. Democracy has always depended on those people, even when they were out of fashion.

This season will examine institutions, power, and consequences with the same rigor as before. But it will do so without pretending to be untouched observers. We are citizens living inside the systems we are examining. Acknowledging that does not weaken the work. It grounds it.

If you feel seen by that distinction—analysis anchored in recognition, then you are exactly where you belong. Not because all will be well, but because the story is still open.

We begin 2026 not by predicting the future, but by refusing to give it away.

Against the Fashion of Despair

As this new year begins, you will hear a familiar refrain from those who claim to interpret the age for a living. They will tell you—again—that the liberal democratic order is finished. That optimism was naïve. That history has turned a corner, and power alone now decides the future. They will speak gravely, cite wars and autocrats, and invite you to adjust your expectations downward.

It will sound sophisticated. It will sound realistic. It will also be wrong.

What has ended is not democracy, but a particular version of it—one that mistook stability for justice and markets for legitimacy. The post–Cold War order promised political freedom while quietly eroding economic agency. It preserved elections while allowing inequality to metastasize. When people began to revolt against that arrangement, elites chose to call the revolt irrational rather than interrogate its cause.

Right-wing populism did not appear out of nowhere. It grew in the space left behind when liberal democracy stopped delivering tangible dignity. But acknowledging that failure does not require surrendering the future to strongmen. Fatalism is not realism; it is abdication.

History does not move in straight lines, and it does not belong exclusively to those who wield weapons. Empires project strength long after they rot internally. Democracies fracture loudly, visibly, and often chaotically—but that noise is not proof of death. It is proof of contestation. Living systems argue with themselves.

Look closely at the world you are told is collapsing. Across continents, younger generations are not demanding authoritarian rule; they are demanding accountability, opportunity, and voice. In Europe, far-right movements rise—and then stall, splinter, or lose when forced to govern. In the global South, protests erupt not in praise of oligarchy, but against corruption and exclusion. These are not the reflexes of a world that has given up on self-government.

What is ending is the illusion that democracy is self-executing—that it runs on autopilot, immune to neglect. That illusion was always false. Democratic legitimacy has always depended on whether people believed the system worked for them. When it didn’t, loyalty decayed. The surprise is not that anger arrived, but that it took so long.

Authoritarianism has one great advantage and one fatal weakness. Its advantage is speed: it can act without consent. Its weakness is sustainability: it must constantly manufacture enemies, spectacle, and fear to justify itself. When it fails to improve ordinary life—and most regimes eventually do—it fractures from within. Disappointment is its undoing.

Democracy, by contrast, is slow, frustrating, and maddeningly imperfect. But it has a regenerative capacity that autocracy lacks—if citizens choose to use it. That insistence is returning, unevenly but unmistakably. Industrial policy is back. Labor is organizing. Antitrust has re-entered the conversation. Younger voters are treating housing, healthcare, and climate stability not as abstract issues but as moral minimums. These are not signs of decay. They are signs of recalibration.

The next democratic order—if it succeeds—will not resemble the one we inherited in the 1990s. It will be less deferential to concentrated wealth and far less tolerant of performative institutions. It will place economic security at the center of democratic legitimacy, not off to the side as an afterthought. It will be louder, more demanding, and more honest about power.

That future is not guaranteed. Democracies can fail. But they do not fail because optimism was foolish. They fail because people are repeatedly told that nothing better is possible—and begin to believe it.

So, if you feel weary, cynical, or tempted to disengage, understand this: despair has become fashionable, but it is not neutral. It benefits those who prefer a tired public. Choosing to remain engaged is not naïve. It is a refusal to let others tell your story about your resignation.

The world is not ending. It is arguing with itself. And the outcome is still being written.

~Dunneagin

 Collected volumes are available on Kindle (Trump’s Big Top: How Politics Became a 3-Ring Circus) and Gumroad (The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy & Mr. Dunneagin Speaks, Vol. 2).