There are all kinds of things we can say about evidence. Evidence always has to be presented, for example — or ‘produced’. It’s then usually reproduced, as we can see in the case of the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Psychotherapists are used to having facts presented to them in the manner in which the American public — at the same time, in 2026, as the rest of the world — is by the current administration: with determination, moral force, justification, and often efforts to locate them in a broader context. More production that Spielberg, Kubrick, or Cameron could ever handle.

What else can we say? The broader context also includes a scepticism about news, a belief that any image can be changed or created from scratch artificially (artificial intelligence arrives shortly after we grow used to CGI). It includes the regurgitation of phrases like “fake news” by a television personality now a president.  A hell of a production.

And we can see that if we don’t allow ourselves to be caught up in this production by, let’s say, forces unknown (which I find it helpful to call whatever seems to be motivating a client to do all they can to convince me of something — without that client realising it — as well as what they are aware they are doing), we see things we are told are not the case, were not the case, and never were the case. Dorothy does this at the end of the Wizard of Oz.  If we think carefully, we recall that whatever is being denied might be what we saw before all the things we saw and heard trying to convince us otherwise.

So, a thought to kick off 2026; a kind of New Year’s resolution. Can we resolve to identify, with all the ruthlessness of the Trump administration, everything that might erode our confidence in what we perceive? What produces that erosion?

Let’s begin here, by focusing our attention for a moment on artificial intelligence. AI is perfectly suited to post-confidence life. An answer for everything. ‘Because that matters’, as its various incarnations are keen to say in answer to any question.

What matters is not a matter for software derivatives of Peter Thiel, clever man though he is, or wheoever else has the money to bankroll AI.

What matters is that each of us does all we can to enhance our capacity to judge, by learning from sources that seem to conflict, fight and aim to cancel each other - or themselves - out. No single source or person. Make sense of that. This used to be called getting an education, which obtaining an answer from ChatGPT is certainly not.