It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment in my life where America started to lose the plot.
It would be easy to wallow in this mess—to doomscroll as the world washes away.
But on this anniversary of the United States of America, I believe we are not without hope. It may feel like America has been careening along the highway of enshittification since the turn of the century, but the thing about driving on highways is that you can always take an off-ramp. The truly remarkable thing about this country is its ingenious ability—through elections, immigration, freedom of speech, and economic mobility—to constantly remake itself.
We need to become makers once again, working against the rage, the despair, the grifting, and the misinformation wherever we find them. And we can. Based simply on what I’ve seen as a journalist over the last quarter century, reasons for hope remain. It can be useful once in while to gather these reasons about us as armor against despair.
First order of business has to be legislation to keep this from ever happening again.
No more felons in the white-house…or congress for that matter. No more moneymaking by people who get a government paycheck. Period. If you make 175K/year, that is the top limit of what you should be allowed to earn over the course of your time in government…
if you’re there to make money, nope.
I’d also propose moving as many agencies away from the purview of the executive and moving them to the legislative. Namely the department of education, department of energy, department of justice,and department of interior with the addition of dissolving the head position in favor of a council with a staggered ten years appointment per seat and strict job requirements within relevant fields IE a park ranger of 20 years is viable for a DoI seat but some podcaster will just get shot.
Maybe like the FBI and such where the directors get appointed for 10 year terms that go beyond a single presidential term…and it has to be near impossible for one president to remote another presidents confirmed appt. (Maybe make it something congress has to act on)
My point is to entirely remove the president from such decisions. Don’t like who Congress chose? Tough shit. Note that ideally Congress will have been brought to heel by the electorate.