As a new year begins, I find myself hoping for something that should not be controversial but somehow has become exactly that. I hope we can stop allowing every conversation, every opinion, and every public thought to hinge on one man in one building hundreds of miles away.
I go weeks, sometimes longer, without thinking about the president. That has been true under multiple administrations. It was true under Donald Trump. It was true under Barack Obama. I did not particularly like Obama, but I did not build my worldview around him. I did not wake up each morning scanning headlines for the latest outrage. I focused instead on my family, my work, my community, and the problems directly in front of me.
That is how a healthy society functions.
Today, too many people allow national politics — and especially Donald Trump — to dominate their emotional and intellectual lives. Every issue is filtered through him. Every disagreement circles back to him. Every conversation becomes a proxy war over the White House. It is exhausting, corrosive, and ultimately unproductive.
This fixation is not civic engagement. It is obsession.
The truth is that most of what determines the quality of our daily lives has little to do with who occupies the Oval Office in 2026. Schools, zoning decisions, taxes, public safety, infrastructure, local businesses, land use, and community health are shaped far closer to home. These are the issues that determine whether a town thrives or stagnates, whether neighbors trust one another, and whether families feel secure.
Yet those discussions are often drowned out by a constant drumbeat of national outrage. Social media rewards anger. Cable news monetizes fear. Politicians benefit from keeping people emotionally inflamed rather than practically engaged. The result is a population that feels perpetually aggrieved but increasingly powerless.
Constant daily acknowledgment and attack are not signs of awareness. They are signs of imbalance.
We are not meant to live in a permanent state of political crisis. Democracy requires attention, but it also requires perspective. A citizenry that cannot look away from national politics long enough to tend to its own communities is not empowered; it is distracted.
As the calendar turns, my hope is simple. I hope more people choose to disengage from the endless national shouting match and reengage with the tangible world around them. Talk to your neighbors. Attend a local meeting. Volunteer. Build something. Fix something. Argue about issues that you can actually influence.
The White House will take care of itself, for better or worse. Our towns, our neighborhoods, and our relationships will not — unless we do.
That is a resolution worth keeping.
