As we close the chapter on another year, one word comes to mind. Outrage. It is the undercurrent of our days, the pulse of our online lives, the noise in our conversations. We are a nation of incredible prosperity. Yet across all ages and communities, too many of us feel unheard, isolated, and angry.
This anger is no accident. It is manufactured, cultivated, and sold back to us. There is big business in outrage. The algorithms of our digital world are masterful at feeding us what will provoke us, stirring our emotions to a boil. Roger Ailes was among the first in the media world to recognize the profitability of stoking fear. With tabloid king Rupert Murdoch’s money behind them, the two created the gold mine we know as Fox News. It’s a channel that has little to do with hard news and everything to do with making money by making you angry.
Twitter’s evolution into Elon Musk’s private propaganda machine is another example. It has become a silo of belief; an echo chamber that reinforce what we already think while fueling our fears and resentments.
The rise of MAGA has revealed how the damage this causes is greater than just heated arguments or hurt feelings. It is a fracture—one that runs deep through our society. Trust, the foundation of any healthy democracy, is eroding. Trust in our government, our courts, our healthcare system, our schools, our media. These pillars of our shared life are cracking under the weight of suspicion and division.
We’re now seeing how MAGA’s chief puppet could care less about his campaign promises. He’s driven by the desire for narcissistic love, money and avoiding the consequences of his actions. He’s succeeded by creating dog whistles like “Fake News” and “Alternate Facts” that foment distrust in everything from our institutions to the Constitution.
And when trust fades, despair takes its place. For some, despair turns to cynicism, the belief that nothing will change. For others, it becomes something darker—a justification for violence. We saw this in the tragic killing of a healthcare CEO on the streets of New York. His death sparked a chorus of anger about our broken healthcare system, but it also revealed something chilling. Violence as an accepted response to frustration. Crowdfunding campaigns for the accused showed us how far we’ve drifted from reason, how normalized outrage has become.
This is where we stand as we enter 2025. Divided, distrustful, and angry. But must this be our future? Must we remain trapped in this cycle of fear and fury? I think not. I believe in the human capacity for connection, for reason, for something greater than division.
There’s a lesson to be found in the very structure of our minds. Within each of us are connections which bridge the two halves of our brain. It is this linkage that allows us to reason logically and feel deeply, to solve problems while keeping our humanity intact. It is a reminder that we are not slaves fear and rage our lizard brains attempt to put at the front of our consciousness.
We can choose. We can choose to step away from the rage machine, to resist the algorithms that profit from our divisions. We can rebuild trust—not just in our institutions, but in one another. That will take effort. It will take the willingness to listen, to step outside our silos, to acknowledge that we are more than the sum of our grievances.
The work is hard, but the stakes could not be higher. A nation cannot survive without trust. A society cannot thrive on outrage.
So, as we look to the new year, my hope is this: that we rediscover the bridges within ourselves and between each other. That we choose reason over rage, connection over division. Let us make 2025 a year of trust, progress, and hope. The survival of our great American experiment depends on it.
