Monster Eats Itself

Yesterday an interesting thing happened, where disenfranchised folks walked right up into the US capitol after Donald Trump told them to do so. They weren’t welcome there, and a few people ended up dead in the scuffles, and a lot of people were mad for a variety of reasons.

There were a few really interesting things that happened in the aftermath which I felt like writing about. Or rather, there were things that didn’t happen. Things people weren’t saying spoke more about the problem than what they were saying.

I was watching the politicians give their self congratulatory speeches live on C-SPAN after the whole thing was resolved, and I couldn’t help but notice how absurd the whole thing seemed.

Failure to Acknowledge Systemic Failure #

I think the most important theme from yesterday was the complete rejection of the idea that the US government itself is experiencing a profound institutional crisis. It’s easy to blame Trump or whatever, but few of the politicians are willing to acknowledge the deeper structural problems within American democracy.

When you have more than 70 million people voting to elect someone who many consider clearly unfit to be in charge of a nuclear arsenal, I think it’s evidence that something fundamental isn’t working in the system.

Trump came out of a country that had already been hollowing itself out for years. People were already angry, checked out, and used to institutions ignoring obvious problems until someone loud enough turned that resentment into a movement.

Beyond Labels: Understanding the Breakdown #

I get that what the Capitol protesters did wasn’t right, but simplistic labels like “mob,” “rioters,” or “terrorists” don’t help us understand what’s happening.

Democracies require that citizens believe several things:

1. That their voice matters
2. That the system is fundamentally fair
3. That peaceful transfers of power are normal and expected
4. That opponents are legitimate, even when wrong

When a big enough chunk of the country stops believing those things, you get days like yesterday, where people decide the whole thing is fake and storm the building instead.

What we watched wasn’t that mysterious. Politicians lie constantly, almost nobody pays for it, and the system just lurches along pretending legitimacy is automatic.

The Case for Constitutional Reform #

The US constitution made sense for the country that wrote it. But it was written for an agrarian society of fewer than 4 million people, before the industrial revolution, before mass communication, before globalization.

The last substantive constitutional amendment was ratified in 1971 (lowering the voting age to 18). For context, this was:

• Before the internet
• Before climate change was widely understood
• Before the modern polarization of political parties
• Before Citizens United and the flood of money into politics
• Before the extreme concentration of media ownership

Other successful democracies regularly update their constitutional frameworks. The average constitution worldwide lasts about 19 years before significant revision. The US is a dramatic outlier in this regard.

Here are some potential reforms worth considering:

• Electoral reform: Eliminating the electoral college or modifying it to better reflect the popular will
• Voting standardization: Creating uniform federal standards for elections to ensure equal access
• Ending gerrymandering: Independent redistricting commissions in all states
• Ranked-choice voting: Allowing voters to express preferences among multiple candidates
• Proportional representation: Moving beyond winner-take-all districts to ensure diverse voices are heard
• Executive branch reform: Limiting presidential powers and strengthening checks and balances
• Expanding representation: Increasing the House of Representatives to better reflect population growth since 1929
• Direct democracy mechanisms: Allowing citizens to vote directly on certain issues through initiatives and referendums
• Accountability measures: Creating clearer connections between politicians’ actions and consequences

The Climate Crisis: Democratic Failure at Scale #

Climate change is where this gets especially ugly, because it’s the kind of problem our system is built to dodge for as long as possible.

The inability to take meaningful action on climate isn’t just a policy failure; it’s an institutional failure. Our governance structures struggle with:

• Long-term planning beyond election cycles
• Managing complex scientific information
• Balancing current economic interests against future needs
• Coordinating international action on global problems

You can see the same pattern in healthcare too: everyone knows the system is warped, and somehow that knowledge just sits there year after year.

From Spectacle to Substance #

Watching politicians deliver grand speeches while their colleagues scroll through their phones encapsulates the performance nature of much modern politics. The focus is often on appealing sound bites rather than substantive governance.

If any of this is going to get better, it probably looks more like this:

1. Civic renewal: Rebuilding civic education and shared understanding of democratic principles
2. Institutional modernization: Updating governance structures for 21st century challenges
3. Information ecosystem repair: Addressing misinformation while preserving free speech
4. Economic inclusion: Ensuring the benefits of growth are widely shared
5. Democratic innovation: Experimenting with new forms of citizen participation and deliberation

A Difficult Path Forward #

I worry that we may have reached a point where reform within the existing system is extraordinarily difficult. The mechanisms for constitutional amendment are themselves products of the system they would need to change.

However, throughout American history, periods of crisis have sometimes created opportunities for renewal. The Civil War led to the Reconstruction Amendments. The Great Depression brought the New Deal. The civil rights movement reshaped American society.

Maybe something useful comes out of this, but only if people push for actual structural changes instead of treating January 6 as a bad day everyone can move on from.

What’s clear is that business as usual isn’t working. Pretending that our democratic challenges can be solved simply by electing different people or tweaking policies within the existing framework ignores the scale of the institutional crisis we face.

Democratic reform, if the phrase is going to mean anything, has to produce a government that can actually govern. Otherwise we just keep doing this, over and over, with more paranoia and less trust each time.

Thanks for Reading #

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for engaging with these ideas. I believe the first step toward addressing our democratic crisis is honest conversation about its nature and scale.

I invite you to consider where you can make a difference—whether through local civic engagement, supporting democratic reform initiatives, or simply fostering better understanding across political divides in your own communities.

If this changes at all, it probably starts lower down than Congress.