SPECIAL END-OF-YEAR COLUMN: Donnie Johnston
How does a man who lived through the McCarthy Era, the Cold War, and the Vietnam Conflict look at the year past, and the year ahead? With concern, and hope.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
Editor’s Note: The final column of the year goes to Donnie Johnston, who has entertained, challenged, provoked, and joked with readers in our region longer than any columnist we are aware. Here’s to 2026 — Knowing Donnie will be there for the months ahead brings some balance to a world that can feel terribly out of balance.
New Year’s Eve.
A day to look back at 2025 and ahead to 2026.
Two thousand twenty-six. We are starting to move through the middle years of the twenty-first century. Impossible! It seems like only yesterday that conspiracy theorists predicted the world would end the instant the clock ticked into 2000.
Still, here we are, a quarter of a century older and still trying to figure out what the new year will bring. Of course, we can only speculate. Some of us anticipate the worst, others the best. That’s just human nature.
But before we try to peer into the future, let’s look back at 2025, which may go down as one of the most crucial and controversial years in American history.
Never have I seen this country as divided as we became in 2025, and I have lived through the McCarthy Era, the Cold War and the Vietnam conflict. Hatred among Americans and between political parties is at a level past generations would never have believed.
If Lincoln was right, that a nation divided against itself cannot stand, then we are doomed, for we are no longer Americans but either Democrats or Republicans. Donald Trump has seen to that.
To say that Trump dominated the news in 2025 is a gross understatement. The first nine months of his second presidency have been wild, tumultuous and unpredictable.
From his Inauguration Day decrees to his condemnation of non-white air traffic controllers following the plane crash at Regan National Airport to his insults to a visiting Ukrainian president to his terror internment camps to his war against fishing boats off the Venezuelan coast, Trump has further split an already divided country and alienated the world – friends and foes alike.
Under his leadership, the Ku Klux Klan was reborn on Jan. 20, 2025, rebranded under federal sanction as MAGA with red hats replacing white sheets. But the hate is still there, with masked faces terrorizing adults and children alike.
Some believe 2025 will mark the year when America’s downfall began. Ironically, 2026 will be this country’s 250th anniversary. Many scholars say that 250 years is the average length of most historical empires, such as Greece and Rome. If so, the great American experiment may be on the way out.
We may have had our last presidential inauguration in 2025, for some believe Trump has decided to remain in office for life, his power to rule until death granted by a Republican congress who – not the American voter - will determine his successor.
Even amid the political turmoil and the Trump tariffs, the Stock Market did exceptionally well in 2025. Despite job losses from Trump’s government shakeup, the economy held up well this year, with gas prices falling and inflation easing. And a prosperous population is a happy one, no matter what rights are stripped.
It was a bad year for the football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins, which had high hopes going into the new season. But that was September. Now, in December, Washington is fighting for last place and a first round draft pick instead of a berth in the Super Bowl.
I guess it wasn’t Dan Snyder’s fault after all. Maybe we should change owners again in the off-season. But then owners don’t throw passes and make tackles. Put the blame where it belongs.
The big question now becomes, will Jayden Daniels be a flash in the pan like RGIII?
It was not a good year for the Washington Nationals, who also flirted with the basement all season. Nationals’ owners don’t want to spend free agent money so maybe we are back to the old saying: “Washington — first in war, first in peace and last in the National League.”
Mid-term elections may be the biggest story of 2026. Have enough middle-of-the-road Republicans had enough of Trump to help vote in a Democratic congress?
Are we headed for war in 2026? If Trump keeps pirating oil tankers, will countries like China come after us? They have the bomb too, remember.
If 2026 is as crazy as 2025, this country may continue on a downhill slide from which it will likely never recover.
In 2025, Donald Trump didn’t make America great. He made America hate and under his “leadership” the chasm of discontent grows, which brings up the possibility of civil war.
The only thing saving us now is that the economy is good. As the Roman poet Juvenal put it, “Give them bread [wealth] and circuses [entertainment] and they will never revolt.”
But then, if the wealthy get wealthier and the poor get poorer, the storms of discontent only grow stronger.
Twenty twenty-six will likely be a crucial year in American history. While celebrating our past, we may watch our future slide down the drain.
No empire lasts forever and America’s grand experiment is no exception.
We can only hope for the best.
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Donnie, You did not mention that Virginia elected a decent person governor this year and by a good margin too. Maybe we can all hang on and rebuild once the worst is over.
Donnie Johnston’s New Year’s Eve column captured something many of us feel but struggle to say out loud: grief, anger, and fatigue at watching our country turn on itself. His words spoke for Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike who sense that the “great American experiment” is under real strain and that our institutions may not be as durable as we once assumed.
Mr. Johnston is right to name the hatred, polarization, and creeping authoritarianism that now shape so much of our public life. And he is right that no republic is guaranteed to last. But an experiment, by definition, involves struggle, failure, learning, and trying again. Our story is not finished, and that is where hope must become more than a closing line. “We can only hope for the best” is a starting point, not an ending.
Hope, if it is worthy of the word, is not passive. It is disciplined action grounded in the belief that what we do still matters. In practical terms, that means at least four things in 2026.
First, vote in every election, from School Board to Congress, and help neighbors get to the polls. Second, support local journalism and factual information so lies and rumor do not define our future. Third, defend the people and institutions that hold the line—election workers, judges who follow the law, public servants who refuse illegal orders—no matter which party we belong to. Fourth, rebuild relationships across party lines here in Fredericksburg and the surrounding counties, because a divided nation will never heal if divided communities never speak.
Many of Mr. Johnston’s readers share his dread about where the country may be headed, even if we disagree on causes or solutions. Yet if we still care enough to be troubled by what we see, then we still care enough to act—continuing the American experiment rather than surrendering it.