2026-The Year We Stop Being Played

Happy New Year!

I’m not going to pretend 2025 was easy. For many of us, it felt like another year of increased division, suspicion, and exhaustion. But as I step into 2026, I’m noticing something shifting. A quiet fatigue with the old playbook. A hunger for something different. I think more people are ready to stop being played.
So for my first post of the year, I want to name a pattern I keep seeing in how we talk about each other. We encounter a problem caused by a few, and we respond with controls and stories that punish everyone.

We call it common sense. But what we’re really doing is acting out fear of the worst among us. And in doing so, we create the very outcomes we were trying to prevent.

I’ve seen this in workplaces where layers of oversight exist to prevent bad behavior. I call it managing to the lowest common denominator. Policies written for the worst employee. Surveillance. Approvals for everything. These systems, built on distrust, make everyone feel distrusted. And people who feel distrusted often stop trying. If you can’t earn autonomy no matter what you do, why bother? The prophecy fulfills itself. Disengaged workers underperform. That justifies more control. More control breeds more disengagement. Round and round.

We see the same thing in policing. When officers are trained to treat every encounter as a potential threat, communities feel occupied rather than protected. Trust breaks down on both sides. Tensions rise. And then everyone points to the conflict as proof that the suspicion was warranted all along.

But the most damaging version plays out in our politics. Our leaders have learned to weaponize this pattern. They take the actions of a few and paint entire groups as the problem. Immigrants. Welfare recipients. The rich. The poor. The police officers. Rural voters. Urban voters. The other party. Pick your target.

Here’s what I need you to hear: half your neighbors cannot possibly be bad apples. When a politician tells you that everyone on “the other side” is the enemy, they’re not protecting you. They’re using you. It’s lazy. It’s divisive. And it works, which is why they keep doing it.

The assumption underneath all of this is that one bad apple spoils the bunch. But that’s only true if you leave the apple in the barrel. The smarter move is obvious: remove the apple, trust the rest.

I want to pause here, because I notice I’m doing the same thing I’m critiquing. Not all managers obsess over control. Not all politicians sell fear. Not all officers approach their work with suspicion. If I paint with too broad a brush, I become what I’m arguing against. So let me be clear: these are patterns, not universals. The goal isn’t to condemn anyone. It’s to notice how fear reshapes our systems until they reflect our anxieties more than our hopes.

Trust-based cultures work differently. They see the good in the whole and deal directly with the exceptions. When people feel trusted by default, when they aren’t lumped in with the worst among them, something shifts. They take ownership. They help solve problems out of pride, not obligation.
Yes, some bad actors will slip through. Some fraud will go undetected, and some law enforcement officers will act out of line. But those costs are almost always smaller than the alternative. Fear-based systems don’t prevent problems. They multiply them. They turn manageable exceptions into major crises by treating everyone as a suspect.

We have a choice. We can keep letting leaders point at problems, amplify them, and build elaborate systems of suspicion. Or we can demand something better.

Look for leaders who resist this pattern. The ones who defend people being unfairly grouped in, especially when those people are on the other side. This is leadership. The ones who call for removing problems, not labeling populations. Those leaders are rare, and they’re worth following.

Here’s the truth nobody selling fear wants you to remember: the barrel isn’t rotting. A few apples are. And you get to decide whether to help remove them or help burn down the orchard.

Every time you share the outrage, repeat the label, or let someone else tell you who to fear, you’re handing them a match. Every time you pause, question the frame, and defend the dignity of people you’ve been told to distrust, you’re choosing the harvest over the fire.
The orchard is ours. Who we follow and how we think will determine whether anything grows here again.

That’s my hope for 2026. Not that we’ll all agree. But we’ll stop letting people profit from our distrust of each other. The shift is already starting. I can feel it. Maybe you can too.