An Opening Message for 2026: Against the Fashion of Despair (🇺🇸 US-UK🇬🇧 Edition)

This opening piece is not an argument so much as a reckoning. It reflects on what it feels like to keep paying attention—to history, to power, to institutional decay—when forgetting would be easier and silence more comfortable. Written at the threshold of a new season, it situates the work ahead not as commentary for its own sake, but as an act of witness: a refusal to pretend that what is happening is normal, temporary, or harmless. It invites listeners and readers into a shared moment of clarity, resolve, and moral attention—before the analysis begins.~Dunneagin Get full access to ~ Civics Unhinged: Dispatches From Trumpistan ~ at dunneagin.substack.com/subscribe