A Letter to America
From an American with Love
I love America. You’re so fucked up. But I love you.
You’re built upon a beautiful and preposterous idea: that ordinary people—you and I—can govern ourselves. Together. Not through superior intelligence. Not through noble birth. Not through accumulated wealth. But through the messy, difficult, glorious work of reasoning together when no one has final answers and everyone has standing to speak.
Some of us have gotten really rich. Really powerful. And they’ve decided the real problem is that we dare to think we’re capable of this endeavor. This experiment in self-governance. They want to replace your Constitution and its laws with a Terms of Service Agreement. They say the “customer service” will be better. They’re the cognitive elite, you see. And the commons—us—is a tragedy. Unrestrained, we’ll vote for regulations and taxes that will slow the march of progress.
Progress toward what? For whom? Where are we going?
They think they know. Musk to Mars. Thiel to monarchy. Yarvin to corporate feudalism with better branding. A whole apparatus of Silicon Valley intellectuals convinced that democracy failed and hierarchy is the answer. That most people should accept subordinate roles. That the intelligent few should rule. That your capacity for self-governance is the problem, not the solution.
They’ll tell you it’s inevitable. That fighting it is naive. That efficiency matters more than agency. That optimization beats dignity. That customer service under enlightened technocratic rule will be better than the messy democracy you’re clinging to.
To hell with that.
Our nation must be defended, of course. China and Russia are real threats. But in meeting those threats, we cannot lose the very thing that makes us different from them. The reason there is a line in the sand. The reason an American soldier would lay down their life. For freedom. For liberty. For the preposterous idea that ordinary people can govern themselves.
Not so some fucking oligarch can tell us that hierarchy is inevitable. Not so feudalism with Wi-Fi can replace the Constitution with terms of service. Not so the “cognitive elite” can optimize us into subjects.
I’d rather wait in line at the DMV with missing ceiling tiles than take a knee before these men.
Because here’s what they don’t understand—what they cannot understand because their frameworks won’t allow it: the inefficiency is the point. The messiness is the point. The fact that democracy is slower and harder and more uncertain than rule by superior intelligence—that’s not a bug. That’s what makes it worth defending.
When you govern yourself, you make mistakes. You argue. You compromise. You change your mind. You live with decisions made by people you disagree with. You accept that your superior insight doesn’t grant you authority over others. You do the hard work of reasoning together across difference.
They say: inefficiency. I say: human dignity.
The oligarchs look at this and see waste. I look at it and see everything worth fighting for.
They want to sell you the idea that surrendering agency will make your life better. That if you just accept your place in the hierarchy, the people at the top will take care of you. That democracy is too hard, too messy, too slow for the challenges we face.
This is the oldest tyranny dressed in the newest language. It’s the same thing every authoritarian in history has offered: surrender your freedom and I’ll give you security. Accept my rule and I’ll solve your problems. Trust me to decide and you won’t have to do the hard work of deciding together.
Every time, it’s a lie. Not because the authoritarians are uniquely evil—though some are—but because the bargain itself is corrupt. You cannot trade freedom for security and get either. You cannot accept hierarchy and keep dignity. You cannot surrender self-governance and remain free.
America, you’re built on the idea that this bargain is bullshit. That ordinary people figuring it out together beats extraordinary people deciding for everyone. That the mess and uncertainty and difficulty of democracy is the price of being human rather than being managed.
Some days I look at you and despair. At how close you are to surrendering what makes you worth defending. At how many people are ready to trade your beautiful preposterous idea for the promise of better customer service. At how the oligarchs have convinced half the country that their own capacity for self-governance is the problem.
But then I see the governors who won’t bend. The representatives calling for new leadership. The millions who took to the streets saying “no kings.” The jury in D.C. that refused to enforce political prosecutions. The judges still building factual records and defending constitutional constraints. The ordinary people who keep showing up, keep organizing, keep insisting that they have standing to determine their collective fate.
And I remember: you’re not your worst impulses. You’re not your oligarchs or your authoritarians or your accommodating establishment. You’re the idea that ordinary people can govern themselves. And that idea—however battered, however threatened—is still alive because enough people refuse to surrender it.
The fight ahead is existential. The oligarchs aren’t going to stop because we ask nicely. The authoritarians aren’t going to respect norms they’ve explicitly rejected. The establishment isn’t going to fight power because fighting costs more than managing.
It’s going to take genuine resistance. Sustained organizing. Economic power used against economic power. Democratic institutions defended by people willing to use them. Governors who fight. Representatives who mean what they say. Citizens who refuse to become subjects.
It’s going to require accepting that some things are worth the mess, the uncertainty, the inefficiency. That self-governance is harder than being ruled but that the difficulty is what makes it dignified. That waiting in line at the DMV with missing ceiling tiles is preferable to kneeling before men who think your capacity for self-governance is the obstacle to their vision of progress.
America, I love you. You’re so fucked up. But the idea you’re built on—that ordinary people can govern themselves together—is the most beautiful and preposterous thing humans have ever attempted.
Some want to replace it with hierarchy. With feudalism dressed as innovation. With Terms of Service where the Constitution used to be.
I say: Let them try. Let them make their case. Let them explain why surrendering your agency will make you free.
And then let us make ours: that you are capable. That self-governance is possible. That dignity requires the right to fail rather than the security of being managed. That freedom means doing the hard work of reasoning together rather than accepting the easy comfort of being ruled by your betters.
The wire still holds. Not because the forces trying to break it are weak—they’re not. But because enough people remember what you’re built on and refuse to trade it for better customer service.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And ordinary people can govern themselves if they choose to do the work.
I choose the work. I choose the mess. I choose you—beautiful, preposterous, fucked-up America, built on an idea worth defending even when defending it costs everything.
May love carry us home. Not as escape but as reminder that what we’re fighting for—the right to govern ourselves together despite our flaws—is worth more than all the efficiency and optimization the oligarchs can offer.
The circus continues. But the idea at its center—your idea, America—is still ours to defend or surrender.
I know which I choose.
The question is: do you?
Go Deeper into the Circus
Chuck Schumer Doesn’t Know What Time It Is
After forty days. Forty days of the longest government shutdown in American history. Forty days of Democrats saying this is the line—healthcare for twenty-two million Americans. Forty days of holding firm while Republicans bet Democrats would break first.
The Judicial Counterrevolution
Judge William Young, eighty-four years old, appointed by Ronald Reagan, recently did something extraordinary. He held a trial—an actual trial with witnesses, evidence, discovery, cross-examination. In the Trump era, this counts as an act of resistance.
"I’d rather wait in line at the DMV with missing ceiling tiles than take a knee before these men." Agree.
That’s a beautiful idea, that the messiness, mistakes, contradictions, lack of clarity, and faults of self governance are the point of it all. Thanks for the insight.