Justice or Amnesia: America’s Defining Choice in 2026 and 2028

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Like many Americans right now, I want to believe that the 2026 and 2028 elections will offer a reprieve from the chaos that increasingly defines our political life. There is a widespread hope that one or both cycles will somehow reset the country and restore a sense of normalcy. But that hope, however emotionally understandable, is dangerously misplaced.

Even if electoral outcomes change, they will not by themselves undo the forces that produced our current crisis.