Strange Times in America: Institutions, Uncertainty, and the Road Ahead
A friend from Brown recently shared a troubling story with me:
“An engineer in the Coast Guard I know, who had served for 20 years, was just fired because he was in a new position for less than two years—technically making him probationary.”
Another friend, an academic physician in the Midwest, told me:
“All of the researchers at my hospital are freaking out. Most of them rely on NIH funding, and studies that have been years in the making could be shut down, leaving people high and dry.”
A colleague working in government infrastructure in New England put it bluntly:
“Everything is being called into question right now. We’re not sure what’s going to be real. It’s an awful environment.”
These are strange times in America, when even the most stable careers, projects, and institutions suddenly seem precarious. The President is upending longstanding alliances, cozying up to strongmen—perhaps because that’s what he aspires to be. Career professionals are being cast aside arbitrarily. Scientists and researchers are left scrambling. Infrastructure projects that have been planned for years are at risk of being tossed out entirely.
For years, I’ve felt that our two-party system has been broken. The Democrats have become defenders of aging institutions, even as those institutions struggle to function effectively. Meanwhile, today’s Republican Party seems increasingly defined by a “burn it all down” mentality. Institutional mistrust and polarization—along with Joe Biden overstaying his welcome—led to last November’s election results.
Most Americans, I believe, exist in the middle ground. We recognize that institutions need reform, but we also know that a chainsaw isn’t the best tool for modernization. The growing number of prominent candidates planning to run as Independents in 2026 is proof that more people are looking beyond the traditional party system for solutions. I expect this trend to accelerate as both parties become increasingly unpopular.
Meanwhile, buried under the political noise, the economy is flashing warning signs. January’s inflation numbers remained stubbornly high, and consumer spending is softening. People are slowly realizing that Trump doesn’t have some secret plan to lower costs—if anything, his policies (tariffs, mass deportations, economic nationalism) are likely to make inflation worse.
The headwinds are picking up. Uncertainty isn’t a great environment for most people—or markets. And yet, uncertainty may be the only thing we can count on in the near future. Plan accordingly.