Newsweek58%
Groundhog Decade: Why Does it Feel Like 2016 Again? 74%
By Shane Croucher76%
8/2/2026, 2:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Negativity Bias, and Confirmation Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 34.9% saturation with 340 hits. Analysis detected 2,194 faulty-reasoning hits from 974 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 60.2% and a BS Rank of 74% (6,795 of 25,725 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 73.60% of the article peer group.
Eyes hazy, you begin to wake up.
As usual, your hand reaches out from the bed covers and instinctively for your cell phone.
The habitual breakfast doomscroll on social media begins.
Donald Trump is everywhere, of course.
Frowning, grinning.
Orange.
There’s another MeToo scandal engulfing an A-lister.
Guns are blazing across the Middle East.
Islamic State claimed the latest terror attack in Europe.
You thumb past images showing crowds of migrants rushing across Mediterranean borders.
Public health alerts squawk about rampant outbreaks.
Everyone’s ranting about socialism.
Wait a second: what the hell is the year again?
If some of the recent news headlines have you wondering, you’re not alone.
It feels a little like we’re back in 2016—the year of the great reset—but done differently this time around.
Is this the start of the Groundhog Decade?
The reset of the reset?
Just look at the evidence in front of us.
It’s more than mere déjà vu.
MAGA Max: Fury Road
We’re more than 18 months deep into our sequel to President Donald Trump, where the intensity of 2016 remains, but with an administration that seems to have learned something from the first movie’s plot.
Trump’s team entered the second term with a clear plan this time and is tearing through it, for better or worse, depending on your view.
No sensibles in this line-up to curb Trump’s excesses.
It’s MAGA Max: pure-of-blackened-heart true believers.
They’ve turned down some of the chaos—only some—without muting the ferocity.
Powering through mass deportations is a case in point.
Tariffs are the new wall.
And the Epstein files are the new Clinton emails (Bill happens to be in both, naturally).
Cancel culture is rearing its ugly head again.
WNBA star Sophie Cunningham, facing a backlash for her comments about protecting women’s sports from trans athletes, slam dunked the haters into oblivion, her lucrative sponsorships intact.
This is 2026 now.
We’re canceling the cancelers, three-pointers at a time.
Different Islamists, Similar Problems
In the Middle East 10 years ago, Syria was in flames and the barbarians of ISIS were rampaging through the Levant.
Today, Trump has a bearded friend in Damascus and ISIS is relegated to a pest rather than a plague.
But there’s a new crisis in the region: the Iran war.
That has its roots back in Trump’s first term, when he canned the nuclear deal.
Now, we’ve just swapped a fight with one set of radical Islamists for another.
The jury’s still out on how this one ends.
ISIS has diminished but not disappeared.
Acts of terror inspired by its followers continue to blight the world.
The vehicle ramming attack during gay pride in Berlin is an echo of similar incidents that were more frequent in 2016.
The threat remains.
There was a mass migration of refugees into Europe sparked by the surge of ISIS, with images of people hanging on to packed boats and standing behind barbed wire fences trying to enter the continent.
Images today of North Africans swimming to enter the Spanish territory of Ceuta, overwhelming the border, evoke those memories.
Boats continue to float across the English Channel.
European cities are still wrestling with the challenges of migration.
But now, in 2026, those migrants and refugees are meeting societies hardened by economic decline, crime, and terrorism, less willing or able to give entry than 10 years ago.
Tough lessons learned and front doors locked, maybe for good.
In Britain, this is true too—but so is the feeling of regret about Brexit, a divorce from the EU motivated by immigration as much as anything else.
Ten years after 52 percent voted to leave, Ipsos found that a majority would now apply to rejoin.
The Artificially Intelligent Rise of Socialism
A decade ago, we fretted about fake news and a "post-truth" world.
And what has really changed there, other than everything getting worse?
Artificial intelligence has opened the floodgates to a sea of slop that is now drowning social media platforms.
One thing that has changed: the insurgent left stopped losing in the U.S.
In 2016, Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, came close to the Democratic nomination, but was at the time waved away as too radical, too obsessed with wealth disparities and "economic anxiety”, for the aspirational American electorate.
Now, a democratic socialist runs New York City—the financial center of the world—and "affordability" is the first word on the lips of every strategist in both parties.
Socialists are rising again, lifted by younger generations, exorbitant rent prices, and the Gaza issue.
We’ve just swapped Sanders for Zohran Mamdani and AOC.
Coincidentally—or maybe not—they’re all New Yorkers.
At least today’s young socialists can use AI to lie a little more convincingly that they’ve read all of Marx’s works.
And generate images to show they met him too.
MeAgain
MeToo is back.
Jared Leto is facing a swathe of sexual misconduct allegations, including teenage girls.
He denies them.
But the story is reminiscent of the retributive era that toppled Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein, and others.
Maybe it never left.
Ebola is also upon us again, mirroring the disastrous two-year outbreak that ended in 2016.
Zika threatened the Rio Olympics that year too.
Now, the U.S. is grappling with cyclospora and measles.
Hantavirus is lurking.
Who knows what’s next?
Yes, this is looking like the start of a decade that just ended.
Any two years can be made to rhyme if you squint hard enough, you might say.
But you can’t deny the resemblances.
Sure, 2 percent mortgage rates would be nice again.
Fewer gray hairs, smoother skin.
But look on the bright side: we’re getting another go at it, with the benefit of experience, hindsight, and wisdom.
Well, some of us anyway.
So here’s to the Groundhog Decade.
Let’s try not to balls it up this time.
Analysis
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