2026 by the Numbers

...and a personal recap of 2o25. Happy New Year!

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It’s been a low-key start to 2026, from the very brief fireworks at midnight to the clouds and gloom throughout the day. From my perspective, wary of what’s to come, it was perfect.

First, as it is semi-tradition for the New Year, let’s run the numbers:

The biggest anniversaries celebrated this year will be the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the 150th anniversary of Colorado as a state. Given the condition of the United States and its Centennial State, one wonders what there is to celebrate. I was a teenager in the Bicentennial Year of 1976 and remember the country as a completely different place, as it had yet to be overrun with tens of millions of foreign invaders from Somalia, India, and various countries in Latin America. Young people with good jobs could buy houses. Inflation was in the news, but not nearly as intolerable as it is now. “The past is another country. They do things differently there,” indeed.

I could go on, but I’ll leave off with the note that, according to historians, the average age of republics, from birth to dissolution, is 250 years. The United States of America as a viable country is slipping away gradually, and soon to be all at once. Nothing is getting better, no one is coming to save us. It’s not getting any better until Christ Jesus’ return, so repent and get right with God before that final trumpet sounds and it’s already too late.

Thanks to the political rigidity of the political class on Colorado’s Front Range/ I-25 corridor, along with that class’ smug contempt of the rural Coloradans who feed them, along with the Venezuelan gang members the city of Denver has been knowingly importing (while vehemently denying what’s going on before everyone’s eyes), it’s not looking any better here. Then again, there will be very little places of refuge once the good ol’ USA collapses, so pray for discernment when it comes to your next move.

Gulf War I, the war in which we finally got over “our Vietnam Syndrome” (as the media described it at the time) and once again embraced wars we had no business in overseas, turns 35 this year. Desert Shield, with silly, portentous sounding tympani announcing CNN’s next “report” on it,  started in August 1990 with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but it wasn’t until 1991 that it turned into Desert Storm—and the whole thing was over in two days.  The media had a nice little chuckle at all the news junkies who no longer got their daily scare rations of fictional miles-long oil fires and the Fifth! Largest! Army! In the World! we were up against, among other things. Satisfied with a job well done, there was nothing left to do but wait for 11 September 2001 so they could celebrate the “forever war of Afghanistan” and the ultimate destruction of Iraq as a first world nation with paved roads, working utilities, and a militant Muslim population in check. All that was set in motion 35 years ago within the first two months of 1991.

Children born in 1996 turn 30 this year. We’re a few years away from the youngest of the last of the 20th century babies being middle-aged. Children born in 2005 will soon be old enough to legally drink in the putative Land of Free, while children born in 2008 will be graduating high school and old enough to enlist and die in the next Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have to Fight Them Over Here misadventure.

Having closed out the first quarter of the 21st century, we’re now closer to 2050 than we are to 2000. I’ve noted that, this far in, the only nostalgia anyone is feeling for any part of this century so far is the very first few years of it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t know anyone who is optimistic for the future. We’re all just making do with what’s left in the ruins of the places where we grew up. For my part, the biggest news affecting my life was quitting my membership in a church I’d been with for three and one-half years. I didn’t want to do it, but my wife was already past disgusted with feeling like a barely tolerated outsider after so long, and had quit attending with me in mid-March. We joined another church down the road in June and it turned out to be so good, so alive, so welcoming, I all but wept for the church we’d left. A dying church is a grim, horrible thing, no matter how bad some of the people there make you feel. The night vs. day comparison never applied more in this particular situation.

The new church had an established worship team with vocalists who could harmonize, a pastor who worked a Line 6 pedalboard, and members who had actually cut commercial CDs. I was happy knowing I didn’t stand a chance of joining such an august outfit, but my wife talked about how I played worship songs on my guitar upstairs to the ladies she was with on a church women’s camping retreat. One of those ladies was the worship team leader, and she personally asked if I would “consider” joining. I said, sure, confident I’d be turned loose after the first couple of botched performances. God had other plans. Not only did I adapt, I found myself improving my guitar skills to match those of the musicians around me. I’m playing guitar better than I ever have in my life. I don’t even suffer the stage fright I had at the old church.

Joining the new church and its worship team is easily the best thing that’s happened to me in years, let alone A.D. 2025.

In other news I very nearly divulged around the beginning of October, but didn’t, was the realization I’m never finishing the third part of my once-ballyhooed Saga of the Dead Silencer zombie apocalypse trilogy. I didn’t mention it then because, a) I figured everyone else had figured this out after 10 years, and, b) I’d gotten a most persuasive sales pitch, with eerily personal notes on my biography, for promoting my first two books, Bleeding Kansas and Grace Among the Dead. I was going to write about that last part but stuff and things came up, and my mid-October post on the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination would be the last thing I’d post until now.

So here we are at the dawn of 2026. With the low-key fireworks and weather, I’ve entertained a low-key dread for what’s to come. I can’t help feeling something awful and catastrophic is in the cards for this year. I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that nothing has gotten better these last 20 years. We can only pray I’m wrong and trust the plan—namely, God’s plan, which is the only one we can trust.

Happy New Year, 2026. We can only pray.

Help a Brother Strike His Chains of Debt