The Crisis, No. 10

The People, sovereign

Something is forming.

You can feel it. In Minneapolis, where citizens stand in subzero temperatures. Where they refuse to leave. It’s in the protests that continue despite the killings. It’s in the judges who say no. It’s in the members of Congress who choose to stand with the people, who refuse to fund the tyranny against the people they represent. It’s Bruce Springsteen writing a song in three days and the whole country learning the names of the dead.

A formation is emerging. Call it populist energy. Call it democratic renewal. Call it the immune response of a republic under attack. The name doesn’t matter. The energy is real. People are waking up. People are moving.

This is the most dangerous moment. This is the moment of impact. We are no longer falling. We are on the ground. It’s very disorienting after so much weightlessness. So much unseriousness.

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These formations of popular passions are not inherently democratic. They are fuel. Energy looking for direction. And there are forces out there. Forces that have been preparing for years. They are already moving to claim that energy. To route it somewhere the People never intended to go.

The demagogue is not a risk on the horizon. He is a known force in the field. The one who has all the answers. The one who will ride the energy and name it after himself. This is the condition under which we must act.

The would-be feudal lords among us struggle to re-assert their merchants of pretense. To control a narrative that has gotten away. They have lost control.

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Republics fail in such ways. Not because the People lack energy. Because that energy gets routed into structures that negate their sovereignty. While claiming to embody it.

When energy meets capture, the result is always the same. The streets fill. The formations multiply. And someone arrives who says he speaks for the people. While building the machinery to ensure the people never speak again. This is not a historical analogy. It is a law of political physics.

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What is under attack in America right now is not a party. Not a set of policies. Not even a set of norms.

What is under attack is popular sovereignty itself.

They have seized the ballots in Georgia. The physical record of how the People voted. The Director of National Intelligence stood in a parking lot. Watched the boxes loaded onto trucks. Five years after the election. The evidence of the People’s will is gone. They seek to rewrite history, so that they may steal the future.

In Minneapolis, a city in occupation by an illegitimate elite. Three thousand federal agents. Loyal to a man. Not the people. The Fourth Amendment ignored. Citizens killed in the street. The People of Minneapolis elected officials who set certain policies. The federal government sent an army to override those choices. And a bullet in the face or in the back is what’s in store if you don’t kneel.

In Los Angeles, the journalist is in custody. Two judges said no crime had been committed. Not one. Two. The executive arrested him anyway. Because the president wanted it. Because the president said so on social media and his Department of Justice obliged. The People’s right to witness what is done in their name has been criminalized. You cannot see. You cannot know. You cannot govern.

The record seized. The governance overridden. The witnesses blinded.

Every action negating the same principle: the People rule here.

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One ideology says the People are obsolete. Sovereignty for sale. Democracy a problem to be optimized. Citizens are users now. Build your enclave. Buy your exit. Route around the People like they’re dead technology.

Another says the People can only act through the Leader. He embodies them. He is the movement. They do not need to speak. He speaks for them. He knows what they want. He is what they want.

Both arrive at the same place: the People do not rule.

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They stole his name. The Free Press—built on oligarch money, staffed by intellectuals who provide vocabulary for domination—calls itself by the legacy of Thomas Paine. Paine wrote to liberate. They write to obscure.

But the theft reveals the stakes. They know the principle they must negate. They know that if the People remember they are sovereign, the entire project collapses.

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The democratic option is not a party. Not a platform. Not a set of policies to be debated and refined.

The democratic option is the reassertion of the principle: the People are sovereign.

The ballots are sacred. Seizing them is desecration. The cities belong to the People who live in them. Occupying them is conquest. The witnesses are protected. Arresting them is blinding. The Leader serves. He does not embody. He does not transcend. He executes the will of the People as expressed through constitutional processes. Or he is a tyrant. Whatever he calls himself.

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The question is not whether there is resistance. There is. The question is what kind. Led by whom. Toward what end.

If resistance becomes about stopping one man, it gets captured by the next man who promises to wield the same power “correctly.” If it becomes about going back to the way things were, it gets captured by the people who broke things in the first place. If it becomes about burning it all down, it gets captured by those who already built their escape pods.

The resistance that cannot be captured is the one grounded in principle. Not “stop Trump.” The People are sovereign. Not “return to normal.” Build institutions worthy of self-governance. Not “burn it down.” Remember what we are building toward.

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The formation is already sorting people. Everyone is being asked, whether they acknowledge it or not: where do you stand on the question of who rules?

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This is not a revolution of replacement. Not a seizure. It is a revolution of recognition. Of remembering what was always true. And acting as though it matters. The People are sovereign. They have always been sovereign. The work is not to seize power. It is to remember that the power was always ours.

The cost of this revolution of conscience is being set right now. Every day the occupation continues. Every witness killed. Every journalist arrested. Every ballot seized. These are not the costs of defeat. They are the costs of victory delayed.

To those still deciding, I might suggest that the time of decision has arrived. These forces will pull you into history, whether or not you want to float downstream. These forces are now bigger than any one person. This is a revolution. It is already too late for many of us. Some have insisted on prostration. Including some people I care about, sadly.

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We are not the only sovereign people. The People are sovereign in Hong Kong and in Minneapolis. In Tehran and in Atlanta. The women killed for showing their hair. The students disappeared for their faith. The voters whose ballots are stolen before they can be counted. They are our brethren in the game of life. We do not claim to lead them. We claim kinship. They have seen this longer than we have. We are only now learning to recognize what they have long known.

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Three weeks ago, Renee Good was shot through her windshield. She was thirty-seven years old.

Eight days ago, Alex Pretti was shot ten times in five seconds. He was an ICU nurse at the VA hospital. His phone was in his hand. He was documenting. He was thirty-seven years old.

Thursday night, Don Lemon was arrested at the Grammy Awards. Two federal judges said no crime was committed. The president demanded it anyway. He is in federal custody for the crime of witnessing.

The People are sovereign.

These are the times that try men’s souls. And the soul of man has gone forth. Now we take a step.

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Go Deeper into the Circus

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