Some random questions, observations, and opinions about America heading into 2026.

Twelve years ago I made the bold prediction that the first woman U.S. President would be Nikki Haley. She would be the one to break the Glass Ceiling. During the Republican primaries going into the 2024 race, she warned that a Donald Trump presidency would bring chaos and confusion. Hmmm…A moot point now. Yet I can’t help but wonder if she had won, would there be a problem releasing the Epstein files? Would there be less animosity on Capitol Hill?

Speaking of ceilings, there is a new buzz phrase called the Paper Ceiling. This is a kind of anti-college movement telling us that a diploma is less important than a skill in the modern world. They may be right in the sense that the job market is changing rapidly. But I worry that it comes as a convenient means for political thugs to squash the vital information and critical thinking skills that are developed in a well-rounded educational system.

The President’s war on drug “terrorists” has sought to impress the public and the rest of the world with dramatic feats on the high seas. Yet despite all these images of our military wiping out little boats in the Caribbean and raining down spider-men coast guards onto suspicious oil tankers, we seem to be ignoring a very important target much closer to home.

Wouldn’t it make better sense to do undercover operations in cities like, say, Miami to find the American businessmen who are financing and coordinating the distribution of those drugs here on American soil? I’m talking about accountability! What about the American users and addicts – are they just victims of the evil regimes in South America? Or do they make choices?

My regard for the billionaire society is a bit jaded. Sometimes I see them as deserving of a life on top of the hill due to their special talents. But I believe that for many of the elite, their special talents have to do with mendacity and duplicity. They can afford to abuse the system. Yet when their puffed up egos are on display, I can see their lame souls under their plastic shells.

Like birds, if you take away the feathers, they are, well, exposed, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Lately folks on the right have discovered Theodore Roosevelt, or at least a speech of his in which he strongly insisted that immigrants fully assimilate: “We have room for but one flag… and one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people”

Strong words, and certainly meaningful in America today. However, we should be aware that Teddy’s rhetoric came a century before the age of technology, and before it became painfully clear that Americans are not so great at STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Kind of lousy, actually, especially compared to Asians and folks from the Middle East. Consequently, we need immigrants, and we need them to be more fluent in the language of STEM than in English. Not just as doctors, engineers, and tech developers; we also need immigrants to do the low pay labor jobs that typical Americans feel entitled NOT to do.

While JD Vance calls on Americans to make more babies, let us call on Artificial Intelligence to calculate and predict the effects of increased population growth on planet Earth, especially in terms of the environment, health, and social issues (e.g. war). I bet it will render a Truth very much like the one a more responsible and empathetic Vice President told us exactly twenty years ago.

If you are a common person and you overspend by racking up debt on your credit card, you run to a lawyer to file bankruptcy before the Repo Man gets at your stuff. If you are a businessman and your business fails because your investments were not wise, you file for bankruptcy. But if you are a nation and you go into trillions upon trillions of dollars of debt, there’s no international superlawyer who can bail you out. So would waging war against your debtors be a justifiable option?

It should be clear to all that what made America great in the past was our form of government. Call it a democracy, or a democratic republic, or a system based on capitalism tempered by socialism. It was a place on the planet that offered individual freedoms, protected against avaricious despots, and guaranteed that no one, no matter how much money, was above the law. Without those guarantees, America will never be great again.

Musician, writer, house painter Pete Howard lives in Dunkirk. Send comments to odyssmusic20@gmail.com