“Another year over, and what have you done?”

If John Lennon were still with us, he’d be singing it once again as he would have needed to every year since he released it in 1971. His anthem to stop war plays every year in the Christmas mix along with “White Christmas,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” and “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” but his message has a much deeper meaning.

He hopes we have fun, but he challenges each of us to stay informed, engaged, and civically active. He knew then, as it stands again now, that “war is over, if you want it,” that change and the solutions lie in our control.

We as citizens still have the ability to collectively put pressure on the government to force change, which is how it has always happened. We are responsible for the officials we elect and whether they feel the need to work for us. Protests get results, even if it takes time. Protests got women the right to vote, workers the right to form unions, desegregation, (the Beatles refused to perform to segregated audiences when they came to the U.S. and the venues were forced to integrate them), the end to the Vietnam War (John’s song), just to name a few. Until this year, we haven’t seen large scale protests like those, it’s been decades.

The Hands Off and the two No Kings protests, with millions participating countrywide, are representative of what we need to be doing right now.

We need to make it known that we do not want an authoritarian government supported by a handful of billionaires whose aim is to sap the government of all the wealth they can at our expense. That we want a country where everyone has equal and fair opportunities, that we want affordable healthcare, living wages, a stable economy, a representative government that truly reflects the needs of the people.

So right now, we’ve just come off of the holidays, and they gave us a diversion from all the mess that the Trump administration has created. It is admittedly easier, and probably necessary for our well-being and preservation of our mental health, to let our attention be absorbed by our holiday traditions and spending quality time with family and close friends.

We could busy ourselves with decorating, buying gifts, parties, etc., so we could for a time forget about the news; which is in itself a growing concern of who is controlling it; and the daily onslaught of corruption, greed, downright meanness, fear tactics, hate and lawbreaking being perpetrated by our own government.

Even though we may have put aside protesting for that time, there were still ways we could do good without mental anguish. Opportunities during the season of giving for feel-good participation were readily available. The holidays present us with so many ways to be of help to those in need, so many homeless, especially veterans; children going hungry — in a country with so much wealth. The inequality of the wealth divide has gotten so bad that the US has over 900 billionaires now and they control more of the wealth by themselves than the rest of the country. They’re not about to help those folks in need. So if we can, we put our dollar bills into the Salvation Army Red Kettle when we hear the bell ringing on our way to shop, or we donate food to one of our many local food pantries, or we volunteer our time wherever help is needed. The ability to give of ourselves, even just a little, rewards us too, we receive an emotional boost in return that we really need.

Now the holidays are done; it’s 2026. Now what? Hopefully the holiday break has provided a recharge to actively address the issues that 2025 has dropped on 2026’s doorstep. We need to work on supporting candidates who will work to reverse the slide away from democracy. We will be facing the effects of the Big Ugly Bill and in November will need to elect representatives in Congress who will change it.

Health care costs will skyrocket. Medicaid will be receiving drastic cuts and ACA subsidies are set to expire, throwing many off of health care coverage that will no longer be affordable to them. This will in turn cause a rise in insurance premiums for everyone else, and hospitals will need to jack up their prices even more outrageously than they are now, or face closing. This is especially concerning for smaller rural hospitals that are already in trouble.

The bill will make deep cuts to the SNAP program, affecting an estimated 4 million Americans who rely on food stamps to put a meal on the table. The loss of the business that the SNAP program provides will hurt small grocery stores and farmers.

Energy costs will rise due to the bill. By cutting investment in clean energy initiatives which provide cheaper renewable energy and sinking money into fossil fuels, this bill will make it harder for us to afford to heat our homes. All of the above will end up in job loss to boot.

In order to give those tax breaks to the rich, the rest of us suffer. Especially heinous is the additional funds approved for ICE to pay for the expansion of migrant detention facilities, which are not necessarily used to maintain humane conditions. A recent 60 Minutes investigation into the CECOT prison in El Salvador was pulled from the broadcast and then leaked, revealing how bad the treatment is there. It will allow a force of masked ICE agents to roam the streets terrorizing their residents.

It is probably going to get harder before it gets easier. As Trump becomes more unstable, making more and more unhinged comments, putting his golden moniker on everything, let’s hope that our fellow Americans who fell into the cult of MAGA, and congress, begin to see how dangerous this has become. He’s about changing the entire world order established after World War II! Although it appears that he may be losing control, he can still cause a lot of damage, even though his cabinet and cronies may be running the show for him.

As bad as it got in 2025, we made it through, and that should be our encouragement to keep going. If we enter 2026 with our moral compass intact, with our sense that things are not right and we need to call out the wrongs; because to give up or to ignore, is to condone, we will make progress. At the end of 2026, we want to be able to answer John Lennon with a list of the progress we made, and a Democratic Congress who will work for the good of all the people, not just the rich.

Susan Bigler is a Sheridan resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com