Why is such radical action necessary?

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."
Antonio Gramsci

The United States of America, the most powerful, successful empire in recorded human history, has reached a critical point in its decline. The effects of a failing superpower are terrible for the American People as well as for the people of the world. For more than half a century, the USA has maintained a world order based on rule of law, free trade, and international cooperation; an order that provided a sheltered, stable environment that enabled the flourishing of our entire species. That safe environment is now collapsing with the integrity of our government. If our nation falls victim to tyranny and corruption, the environment that generated so much peace, prosperity, and progress falls with it. The world will return to the historic norm, where might makes right, where ideals are just illusions and dreams are just delusions. Our national collapse may bring joy to our geopolitical rivals and other anti-American entities around the world, but putting the world’s dominant military in the hands of a petulant tyrant is the stuff world wars are made of. All of us, American citizens, allies, and foreigners, will suffer immensely from a tyrannical United States of America.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

The corruption in our American civilization is obvious and overwhelming. It seems that our decay is simply too entrenched to remove, that it has metastasized throughout too many vital institutions and diversified across too many executives. Destructive corruption is not unique to our nation, it is a pattern that is seen across history and around the world. Powerful empires fall victim to internal corruption; and while we like to think of ourselves as exceptional, we are no exception to this pattern. We have devolved from a healthy, democratic republic into an oligarchic kakistocracy, a society in which our most corrupt citizens are also the most powerful. The leviathan institutions that once protected the liberties, freedom, and rights of the American People have turned against us. The federal government has been captured by a powerful, wealthy aristocracy that acts in their own interests at the expense of the American People, enrichening themselves beyond imagination and driving most of our citizens to the brink of exhaustion.

"No nation can survive the treason of its elites."
Cicero

Tyranny, the nemesis our ancestors risked everything to revolt against, can be seen from three noble perspectives.

“The tyrant … has no regard to any public interest, except as conducive to his private ends; his aim is pleasure, … a tyrant pursues his own good.”
Aristotle

Aristotle, one of the most accomplished philosophers in antiquity, defined tyranny as rule for the ruler’s benefit, rather than for the benefit of people. In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court legalized unlimited political bribery, allowing corporate and aristocrat wealth to flood our elections, drowning out the will of the American People. The corruption stemming from this ruling has corroded our government across federal, state, and local levels, spreading pay-to-play politics like cancer. Politicians no longer serve their voters, they serve their donors; and they do so knowing that serving their donors means betraying their voters. Our elected officials use their positions to enrich themselves, trading on insider information and lining up high-paying, post-politics jobs. That systemic corruption is completely separate from the clear, ongoing corruption of the current administration, where the President and members of Congress are personally enrichening themselves, breaking long-standing traditions and numerous laws, and avoiding justice through the power vested in them. Our President is a pathological liar, he is probably a pedophile (or he would release the Epstein files to prove he is not one!), and he is using the power of the Presidency to protect himself from negative consequences. Our laws no longer apply to powerful citizens, and that fact is a betrayal of the founding ideals of this nation. Without checks there is no balance. By Aristotle’s definition of tyranny, rule for the ruler’s benefit, we have a tyrannical government.

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”
John Locke

John Locke, the enlightenment thinker who dared challenge the divine right of kings, believed that tyranny occurs when a government violates the natural rights of the people it governs. Under the new administration, the attack on our inalienable rights is only growing more severe. 1st Amendment rights are failing, with freedom of speech becoming increasingly restricted. Individuals are being arrested for simply voicing unpopular, uncomfortable opinions, and institutions pressured into acquiescing to the President’s whims. There are secret police arresting law abiding citizens on the basis of ethnicity alone, violating the 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments, as well as the Civil Rights Act. There are concentration camps being erected, areas where basic human rights are a nonexistent. There are thousands of people being disappeared. There are military units deploying to cities around the country to quell phantom unrest, violating the posse comitatus act.. Finally, looking beyond recent developments created by the current administration, the 4th Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches, has been shredded by the Patriot Act and Section 702. Government intelligence agencies now spy on Americans, harvesting personal data without warrants, due process, or oversight (as well as corporations). By Locke’s definition of tyranny, government infringement of their citizen’s natural rights, we have a tyrannical government.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
James Madison

James Madison, one of America’s original founding fathers, warned that tyranny arises when a single branch of government consolidates too much power. Trump v. United States granted the President absolute immunity from criminal prosecution while in office. And to skew the balance of power even further, our sitting President passed an executive order stating that the President’s interpretation of the law will supersede all others, including the authority of the judicial branch. Furthermore, Congress, the other major check on Presidential power, is more or less powerless to enforce their will – when they choose to even try. A sitting President attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing an election, and then incited a violent insurrection to prevent a legitimate transfer of power. He has yet to receive any meaningful consequences for doing so. He even pardoned those involved in this violent riot, including those charged with seditious conspiracy. Our sitting President seeks plenary authority, completely unrestricted power, in direct violation the moral and intellectual foundation of this nation. And beyond the recent political turmoil, our President is capable of raining down death and destruction around the world, whenever they choose to do so, acting as judge, jury, and executioner. History has shown that Presidents exercise this power frequently, regardless of political affiliation. Our President has become, in effect, an unaccountable demigod, unchecked in any material way, and so by Madison’s definition of tyranny, the over-consolidation of power within a single branch, we have a tyrannical government.

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

A cancerous corruption now permeates every level of our government, it runs deeper than the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court; these high-level bodies are simply our most obvious tumors. Laws and politicians are purchased by corporations and aristocrats, regulators are controlled by the industries they oversee, and the average Americans is left powerless, forced into trading most of our time, energy, money, and lives in exchange for simply surviving. We are the strongest, wealthiest, most technologically advanced civilization on the planet, but it does not feel like it for most of us. Life for the average American feels like a form of slavery; one enforced by credit scores, connections, and resumes rather than chains and whips. Because of the unacceptable tyranny exhibited by our government, a revolution is not only justified, it is necessary for the sake of our lives and the lives of future Americans. While the term revolution insinuates alarm, violence, and chaos, we must acknowledge that it is the only real solution. Changing our entire political architecture is the only way to fully address the extent of decay in our political system. And until we resolve the hijacking of our government by wealth, our other systemic problems will simply get worse, and our lives will simply become bleaker and more painful. Let’s expand on two of those systemic failures: environment and economics.

"If we fail to act now, the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."
David Attenborough

To further establish why a wholesale change to our political system is necessary we must examine the environmental crisis. Claiming that our lives are at risk might seem like a hysterical, ridiculous claim, but the reality is that our lives depend on radical, coordinated action on a scale that is politically impossible right now. The climate catastrophe is way worse than people understand. It poses an overwhelming yet obscure threat to the American People, as it does to most life on planet Earth. Consider this: James Hansen, a former NASA director known as the godfather of climate science, believes that an 8 to 10C of warming is already guaranteed. Life as we know it ends around 3C of warming. We have already passed the 1.5C limit set by the Paris climate accords, 25 years ahead of schedule, and as a species we are still emitting record levels of greenhouse gases. Our civilization is built on an agriculture system dependent on stable weather patterns and these weather patterns are changing dramatically. If these patterns change so much that our crops fail, our entire civilizations breaks down and we all suffer immensely. All of our comfort and convenience is wholly dependent on our food system working as it should. Like a house of cards, if the bottom row falls, so does the rest of the superstructure. If the agriculture system fails, so fail all of the other technological developments since the advent of agriculture. Our incredibly sensitive, just-in-time, all-consuming civilization is fundamentally unprepared for inevitable effects of climate change, changes like AMOC collapse, sea level rise, and mass agriculture failure. Our government was unable to prevent our civilization from literally destroying the habitability of the world, despite knowing the consequences decades ago and being the dominant global superpower, and so that government must be wholly replaced for our safety and happiness.

“You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or you can have democracy. But you can’t have both.”
Louis Brandeis

Finally and most infuriatingly of all, our society only really benefits a fraction of a fraction of us, most of whom inherited their immense privilege, wealth, and power. Our socioeconomic problems are rooted in the immense inequality in income, wealth, quality of life, and ultimately, happiness and suffering. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and inflation is making it increasingly impossible to afford the basic necessities of life. Housing, education, and healthcare have become unaffordable for a huge number of us. Our justified anger at these complex, nuanced trends are being used by legacy media conglomerates, social media empires, foreign rivals, and bad faith actors to erode the bonds that bind us together into a Union, straining our collective national identity to the breaking point, polarizing us more with every passing day. To make matters even worse, the artificial intelligence revolution is simply going to make our socioeconomic problems worse, further widening the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Our government has proven itself incapable of regulating our society so that it provides an acceptable standard of living for all American citizens, and so it must be replaced.

"When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty."
Thomas Jefferson

Extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary responses, and we face a set of circumstance more dire than any in our history. We face an environmental crisis, and economic crisis, a technological crisis, a cultural crisis, and a political crisis – and we face them simultaneously! We have slowly inched into a reality where radical, rational action is absolutely necessary for the survival of our nation. Circumstances dictate that we must overcome tyranny or fall victim to it. Redesigning our entire government creates immense uncertainty, but if we do not act now, life for all Americans will become increasingly worse as our government becomes increasingly tyrannical and the complex environmental, ecological, and economic systems our lives depend on become increasingly unstable. These threats will not materialize today or next week, but in the coming years and decades they will create a series of tragedies the likes of which we cannot imagine, a series of tragedies worse than any in living memory. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are quite literally staring down the twin barrels of an agricultural apocalypse and a second civil war. Ten years ago, these claims would have seemed hysterical, who knows what the next ten years will bring if we continue pretending everything is fine. Our lives depend on creating a government that is loyal to its citizens, one capable of handling the challenges of this age, and our current government is neither loyal nor capable of handing these codependent crises.  

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”
Niccolo Machiavelli

Our present government is built entirely by the Constitution. This document is the foundation from which every single office and law derive their powers. That Constitution is more than two centuries old, making it one of the oldest in the world. It was written in an age of sail-powered shipping and horseback messengers, an age where slavery was legal and women were property. We live in an age of geosynchronous satellites, ubiquitous social media, and pocket supercomputers, an age of complexity and technology light years beyond what the Founding Fathers could have foreseen. We are trying to run a 21st century society on 18th century laws, and it is not working. Just as the Constitution replaced the failing system of law and order created by the Articles of Confederation, the time has come for the Constitution itself to be retired and replaced. Business as usual is no longer acceptable to the majority of the American People, but knowing what to change is incredibly difficult and complicated, a task which lies beyond the capacity of any single person or organization.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”
Declaration of Independence

The Constitution was genius for its time. We must recognize that outstanding success of our Constitution: it became the foundation for the strongest, wealthiest nation in recorded history. It became a living document that endured for a quarter millennium, evolving to keep pace with the needs of the American People, creating a civilization powerful beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined. But all things come to an end; and constitutions are no exception to this law. Replacing this document creates immense uncertainty, but not replacing it results in increasingly terrible consequences for us all. If we are to take this drastic step, we need to make sure we replace our government with a better one, conserving the values that made us so successful and implementing progressive policies in accordance with those values to create institutions capable of supporting a magnificent civilization.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin