What We Build Next
The Fall of this American Republic Brings Opportunities for Us All
In these days, I find myself in the dichotomy of being defined by something as an act of compliance and being defined by something as an act of rebellion.
Wisdom reminds us that binaries are rarely useful constructs when trying to cast a vision for the future. But for the sake of preparation, I have been in meditations this past month on the fall of the American republic.
It’s as terrifying as it is exhilarating.
Living through the federal occupation of Operation Metro Surge was a practice in what it means to actively resist tyranny. I like our chances.
Before we go too far, here is a cursory summary of the current dynamics of our republic:
1. Donald Trump has appointed almost 300 federal judges and while both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton appointed more, not all of their appointees remain on the bench, while Trump’s secret weapons remain active like landmines in the justice system.
2. Chief Justice John Roberts insists that the Supreme Court is not political, while the court rejected democratically-chosen redistricting of Virginia’s congressional districts while simultaneously favoring pro-Republican district maps redraws
3. Associate Justice Samuel Alito included fake data in gutting the voting rights act
4. Donald Trump continues to loot the government by selling his ballroom and repainting the reflecting pool by using no-bid contracts.
I remind us of all these dynamics not to take away hope, but to shift the locus from the preservation of this fragile lacework to weaving something new and usable for as many people as possible and by teaching others how to weave it, too.
It is entirely fitting that Donald Trump is the face of the 250th anniversary of the United States, I have no notes for improvement. He is a conman who leveraged enough of other people’s capital and secrets and simply used unchecked declarative powers long enough to sew chaos into a fractured system to get his way. He is every timber baron, every robber baron, and railroad tycoon who massacred in the westward expansion. He is the embodiment of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
But his weakness is his animus that emboldens him to go too far, demolishing the pillars of law that not only keep us safe, but that ultimately protect him as well. By the time the fall of the republic is complete, he will be whisked away to The Hague so swiftly that no court, no member of Congress, and no successor will have authority to free him. And his followers will be exhausted.
We are in the age of people telling us who they are by denying who they are, explicitly.
I thought of calling this the Age of Lies, but a lie is an innocent act of a child who’s caught in the shame of their misdeeds. What’s happening in the Unites States and its colonies now is a wholesale revolution—and not like the Bernie bros wanted. It’s a consistent and constant attack on what we thought the United States of America could be, as well as what it actually was.
But even that is flattening out the depth of this death.
When my favorite culture maven Fran Lebowitz came to Minnesota two years ago, the question-and-answer session was filled with goodly white elitists who wanted to hear themselves wax poetic about the fall of Western civilization at the hands of this New York-by-way-of-Florida barbarian, but she shut it down quickly.
She reminded us that in this age of American-style democracy, the anarchists aren’t the punk leftists who get called Communists by the people who don’t know the difference, the real anarchists are the men (because they almost are all exclusively men) of the Republican Party. They had effectively staged a takeover of the party, infiltrated its most sacred inner sanctums, ransacked everything, and set their sights on government. Some could rightly argue that even that is flattening out the creeping vine of authoritarianism that has always been present in the Republican Party into a squiggly line for the benefit of the Yale Young Republicans alumni association. Furthermore, in this shake-up, Democrats have become the new (small “c”) conservatives because they’re trying to conserve what semblance of government we have left; for naught, it seems.
The room full of well-insulated, senior, The New Yorker and Utne Reader readers fell silent. They could never.
That was in July of 2024 before I set off on the train to Chicago to be a delegate to the DNC Convention. It would be less than a year later that Elon Musk’s looting of our government-held data project named DOGE would fully disrupt the function of the bureaucracy of our government.
My guilty pleasure in these days is watching the kernels of white moderates pop on social media. Usually, it’s in response to some news about how the Trump administration is looting and pillaging, or how the Supreme Court is acting so brazenly out of character. It’s usually accompanied with cries of “how could they?” or “they should be ashamed of themselves!” The cognitive dissonance that the middle is experiencing is the disruption that we need to usher in the next part of this breaking of the republic, because when the comfortable middle is afflicted, they might actually start noticing what’s been happening at the margins for a long time now.
Any western society’s favorite pastime is intergeneration blaming for the simple act of change and we’re right on schedule. Baby Boomers lump anyone born after 1972 in the Millennial group and the Gen Alphas and Gen Zers could never.
But beyond the pop culture analysis of who’s to blame for the fall of the republic, what gives me heart is the amount of keepers who understand the quantum reality of shifts we’re experiencing in these days. Enough people remember, enough people see what’s happened, and enough people are interrupting strategically to make an impact.
For my part, I am leaning into my family tradition of storytelling.
My father was a wacipi eyapaha, powwow emcee in English, and his greatest gift was being able to keep people entertained. The wacipi he’d emcee were usually smaller affairs, community powwows in the summer, Upper Cut Meat, Corn Creek, Ring Thunder, where families came together to dance, honor relatives, hold memorials, hold making-of-relative and wiping-of-tears ceremonies. He knew his relatives well and was able to share stories from their past and teach everyone a valuable lesson: no one was too important or too sacred to receive some jibing.
The histories and stories he knew about his relatives were volumes of entertainment that would last hours while we waited for a baking sun to complete its run over the center of the arbor.
In my middle age, I’ve found myself using dinner time to share memories with my nephew and his daughter. “Did Unci ever tell you about … ?” before reminding him of things he had stored deep inside while simultaneously creating a new memory for my ťakoja.
My skills are that I can cook for a small army, I can clean up after them, I can walk far, and I can hold a story for years until it’s ready to be told to someone who could use it. I grew up hunting but my aim continues to deteriorate with my vision. Nonetheless, I am prepared for my role in the revolution and fall of this republic.
In that spirit of not just lamenting what has passed away and living in regret, but also looking forward to what we build, together, I offer the following processes and priorities from my vantage point in this momentary existence.
