But we are not helpless

“Officials in the administration no longer appear to care what the American people want.”

America is causing much of the world to freak out. Where the country once stood for freedom and prosperity, its current leader and his associates, seemingly bent on amassing glory and riches for themselves and their friends, are spreading their ambitions violently to other nations, while the political, legal, business, religious and other institutions capable of stopping them seem paralyzed, if not elated. The country appears to have lost its way and humanity a measure of hope.

But we the people are not helpless.

On New Year’s Eve, historian Heather Cox Richardson, who has become a source of hope and wisdom for those who see the descending darkness and long to resist, asked the followers of her daily “Letters from an American” to declare what they did in 2025 to keep the spirit of hope alive. More than five thousand people responded. Here is a representative list of what they said they did:

· Pray

· Join groups

· Raise money

· Donate money

· Volunteer

· Make signs

· Carry signs

· Spread petitions

· Sign petitions

· Protest

· March

· Register voters

· Serve as poll workers

· Serve as peacekeepers

· Vote

· Honk in support of the people. (One woman who is handicapped and can’t walk drove her car to different protests and honked in support.)

· Wave at cars to keep people’s hope up

· Wear t-shirts with provocative messages

· Fly flags

· Get educated

· Keep informed

· Teach

· Write and publish

· Produce art

· Cancel subscriptions to publications perceived as cowardly or corrupt

· Start subscriptions to publications showing independence and courage

· Build community

· Help neighbors

· Shop for immigrants afraid to leave their homes

· Attend school board meetings

· Boycott businesses that support the government

· Support businesses that support the people

· Talk to customers in line at the store

· Talk to family

· Write letters to Members of Congress

· Stay alert

Every one of us has a space within which we can work, using our interests and talents to oppose injustice and help lift our neighborhood, our nation and the world. “We want to live our values daily,” one commenter wrote, “and to fight for the common good.” Wonderful. Many see the challenge not as “out there” but as “in here,” the challenge to find the energy and ideas that will help unite humanity, keeping hope alive. If we do our part, we will emerge from the challenge even stronger, more alert, more capable, more united. As another commenter wrote:

My prayer is that we as a nation will come out of this time changed – showing kindness and mercy, loving justice and being the people we have always said we were – but collectively weren’t.

Remember the truth we addressed last week, the cure for governmental and societal insanity:

Truth and love will establish a healthy state…¹

We are not fighting a political state in the pursuit of truth and love, nor are we fighting its leaders and institutions. We are fighting passivity, anger, hate, fear, the enemies of real freedom. Our enemy is not people, it is fear. The God that is divine Principle, divine Love, is operating through us to neutralize this fear and bring healing right where we are.

The point of democracy is to create a government that frees every person to think and act to their highest sense of what is right. If a government is not democratic it is not wholly legitimate. We all have a responsibility to act with wisdom and divine inspiration as much as we can and thereby help lift the state and its people to a higher sense of freedom.

So, despite the forces that seem to have amassed unstoppable power, we are not helpless. For example, if some in government and the media want us to stay adversarial, fighting each other instead of their machinations, know that the claim of societal division is just another iteration of the big lie that we are victims of forces beyond our control. We don’t have to comply with this lie, even if those who promote it call themselves patriots.

Silicon Valley renegade Mike Brock wrote perceptively last week that 2026 is a year Americans will need to step up again and defend the nation.

Your grandparents knew which side they were on when the republic was threatened. They fought. They won. They built the middle class and the democratic alliance that kept the peace for seventy years.

We will do it again.

I often talk about America and its democracy, not just because I am an American but because America, for better or worse, sets a tone in the world. Yesterday Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey told two podcasters that the country is “declining” as a democracy. I prefer to look at it in a different way. We are a people being tested. Yes, one week into the year, and we are already in what seems like a crisis. Threats and violence and predictions of catastrophe flood the internet. But don’t be discouraged. Keep alert, keep morally and spiritually grounded, and we – America and humanity – will come out of this stronger than ever.

Be not afraid.

1. Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 414

The subhead is from Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, January 4, 2026