Thank you. Truly. For asking the only question that matters. I'm sorry if I came off as someone who tears ideas down without providing alternative thoughts and options. That is not who I am.
Many are content to sit on the sidelines and dissect the collapse like it’s an academic exercise. Post-mortem punditry without the burden of prescription. I’m not interested in that. I never have been. I've been fighting these battles on campaigns, with time, effort, financial resources, sweat and tears for decades now. I can also see how my writing, especially something like this, might read like fatalism. Like I’m screaming about the problems with no intention of fixing them. That is not me.
I do believe in a path forward. I just don’t believe in a comfortable one.
As far as I can see, there are only two paths left. Others may see more. I don’t.
Path One: You resign yourself to the reality that this is a 40+ year fight. Not a campaign cycle. Not a news cycle. A generational project. I explain why that timeline is necessary here:
And then you do the quiet, grueling work of rebuilding from the dirt—showing up locally, school boards, city councils, state legislatures—because national power only reflects what’s rotting or thriving underneath. I wrote more on that here:
Path Two: You become part of starving the machine—financially, culturally, structurally. You figure out how to stop feeding the apparatus that keeps this corpse animated. I laid out that angle here:
Neither of these paths is clean. Neither comes with applause. Neither offers you the fantasy of fixing this in your lifetime. Neither is easy.
People generally do not like my ideas, because they are hard. Both of these ideas require real sacrifice—time, comfort, money, community, and sometimes your own peace. Sacrifice sucks. It’s slow. It’s lonely. But I don’t see a future without it. The only answer I see is a significant sacrifice from those of us who are still attached to reality.
Sacrificing for a future, we won’t benefit from.
But someone will.
And that, to me, is enough.
So again—thank you. Not just for calling me out. But for caring enough to ask the question most people are too afraid to face.
It's taken me a while to see things as I do now, much in the way you describe here. I've finally come to understand that there really *shouldn't* be an easy way out this, much as we might wish otherwise.
What we're losing now took millennia to build with knowledge born of pain and suffering. Like a brute force attack over the ages, plugging away one mistake after another, mankind at long last acquired the ability to improve upon its once brutal existence. Standing upon the shoulders of our forebears, we eventually achieved a rarity in human history: A democratic republic, founded in the morals and values of classical liberalism. This was and has always remained experimental rather than a cosmological certainty. Taken for granted, it's practically guaranteed to end in its destruction.
Like most things in life, what we've had is easier to maintain than to build, easier to destroy than maintain. We've neglected our responsibilities and now are in the destruction-over-maintenance phase. The longer the destruction continues, the more rebuilding is required. Unless we resign ourselves to happenstance and have the improbable fortune of being rescued by some unknown outside force, the only way out of this mess is through it. And we're still only dealing with the defeat of the authoritarian threat right now, not even the rebuilding part, should we succeed.
The easiest path forward in the near term is to give in to the lie, put on the red hat, and let your brain turn to goo as you abandon independent thought. If you're here reading this, you're probably not down with this option. The next easiest is to patiently yet minimally resist, hoping an unlikely hero saves you and you'll awaken from this nightmare to the comforts of the Before Times. Otherwise, you're going to have to do some real resistance somehow, and resistance, by definition, is hard.
This is just the immediate fight for control. Should we be fortunate enough to resist and overcome the authoritarian menace, we have to start rebuilding society and building is always harder than maintaining or destroying.
Should we succeed and find ourselves with a liberal democratic republic once more, it's imperative take to heart that we're all much better off with the relatively light responsibilities of maintenance than we ever are with construction or destruction. This gets at what you said about local politics; we need more civic education and engagement across all walks of life and at all levels of society. As citizens, we need to regularly exercise our values. The only way we can hope to avoid this path again is to remember the hard-won lessons learned. Regular engagement in remembrance of our past and making one's participation in society an integral part of what it means to have citizenship is our "easy" path in the long run.
The opposition would be well-served adopting the Navy SEAL adage: The only easy day was yesterday.
This is one of the strongest articulations I’ve read—not just of where we are, but of why it’s supposed to be this hard.
A republic cobbled together through agony and contradiction, pushed forward inch by inch through blood, error, protest, revision. For a brief window in history, it almost held. Not perfectly. Not equitably. But functionally. Enough to believe in.
Then we stopped believing it needed us.
You nailed it: We’re not even in the rebuilding phase yet. We’re still trying to survive the wrecking ball. Still fighting just to keep the lights on in the idea of shared reality. If we’re lucky we’ll come out the other side not to celebration, but to rubble. That’s when the real work begins. The harder work. The thankless work. The kind no one gets credit for in a news cycle.
We need to remember through action. Civic engagement not as a hashtag, but as identity. As habit. As the bare minimum of citizenship. Because you’re right—maintenance is lighter than destruction, but only if we don’t forget what happens when we stop maintaining.
I agree this is a long haul—it took the GOP more than forty years to get here at the apex/nadir of political power. They were patient. The left? God no. If it isn't fixed now now now they stay home next election to teach Congress a lesson, thereby exacerbating the problem. Laws must be changed surrounding free speech. Lies must be reigned in. We also need to break up media monopolies that allow one RW billionaire to own most of the television and radio stations, and even newspapers (what are left of them) in huge swathes of the country. It's the only way to break the hold of the vast RW propoganda machine. Reagan broke up Ma Bell. It can be done. But we need the political will.
But to do that there have to be large majorities of Dems in both Houses to pass such legislation, and a Dem president has to be willing to pack SCOTUS, otherwise such laws would be ruled unconstitutional and we are right back at scratch. Same with campaign finance. It cannot happen until SCOTUS is changed. Why so many people don't get that is beyond me. And peope have to keep coming out and voting for Dems election after election after election. It's not one and done.
But I completely disagree with your suggestion that people take another option and flee the country. While the monied can "sacrifice" by moving to France, the rest of us who aren't as fortunate will sacrifice our health, well being, economic security, and freedom. Not exactly a fair trade off.
You can keep framing emigration as some kind of luxury cruise for the monied elite, but that’s not reality. The vast majority of immigrants aren’t rich. They’re not fleeing to some fantasy of ease. They’re making sacrifices most Americans wouldn’t stomach for five minutes, leaving behind family, identity, language, safety, on the chance their kids might have a shot at something better.
That’s not comfort. That’s courage.
Pretending otherwise isn’t just inaccurate, it’s the same kind of unreality that corrodes everything we claim to be fighting against. If we’re going to demand truth from the MAGA cult, we better damn well be willing to live in it ourselves.
This isn’t about liking the options. None of them are good. This is about telling the truth about what they cost.
The truth is: Migration, when it’s chosen as a political and moral line in the sand, is not abandonment. It’s not indulgence. It’s sacrifice. It deserves to be named as such.
I fully understand that emigration isn’t a sacrifice you’re willing to make. I understand why. It’s a brutal, complicated, deeply personal decision.
Please don’t frame emigration, or immigrants, as wealthy vacationers chasing ease. That’s a comforting illusion designed to justify staying put, and it erases the real cost millions endure just to survive somewhere new.
Make the choice that’s right for you. Truly. But respect that others are doing the same. The fight for a future isn’t one-size-fits-all—and pretending it is only serves the system that’s already trying to break us.
Lived through the civil rights south , in a small Alabama rural town, of poverty and a few rich people. Here we are again in some ways, not all- there was progress.
I will be reading these substack articles. I keep realizing over and over that, at age 55, I will not be seeing the end of this story in my lifetime. In some ways, it's part of the eternal struggle against the forces of ignorance that people have been fighting since the first Homo sapiens tried to get his children to stop eating the shiny berries. We are so far past politics now, and I don't think politics or economics can solve our irreconcilable differences. In fact, once Trump was re-elected, I signed up to volunteer for a food bank that works to keep people housed, as we all know where this is going: hungry, homeless children. And when people reach that point, who will be there to help? MAGA or us?
As far as I'm concerned, it had better be us. And it might not be.
Cannot remember exact quote, or from who, but someone once defined "statesman" as a person committed to planting trees knowing he'd never see the shade.
Good question, but I'm afraid he answered it in the last line. We need to get to the ruins first. Then we rebuild it. Exactly what we're all afraid of.
Exactly what I’m seeing. Not quite four months into this and his supporters still making excuses for him and still unbelievably blaming Dems (ie He only won because they were so terrible,) I fear things will have to get much worse - primarily economically and health wise- before enough people start waking up. My husband and I have started making financial adjustments. Next on the To Do list are updated wills.
Yes. Same here. The excuses are endless, shameless, and completely impervious to contradiction. The worst part? They’re not even defending him anymore. They’re defending the need for him to be right. Because the alternative would mean confronting everything they ignored, enabled, or endorsed. Most of them just… won’t.
I agree with you—things will likely have to get a lot worse. Not because it’s inevitable, but because that’s how deep the delusion runs. Economic collapse, health crises, institutional breakdown. I also have a fear that none of it will be seen as consequence, just more proof the enemies need to be punished harder.
We aren't going to win back the hardcore MAGA. There were Germans decades later who still missed Hitler. THey're gone and they ain't coming back. But they are not half the country. They are maybe a third, which is a frighteningly large enough percentage. Until it breaks through like the Signal story, people are not aware and that is the media's fault because they don't cover what is happening with the immediacy and truthfulness it deserves. That's where it's up to us to use our own outlets—not just here, but X (if you're still there). bluesky, IG, FB, TikTok etc to spread the word. Email your friend that damning clip. Tell your veteran uncle what they are doing to the VA. Let your friend know that her grandma with alzheimer's in the senior's home may be coming to live with her parents if they cut Medicaid because unless they can pony up the thousands of dollars per month for her care, she'll be kicked out.
Actually, to be a bit of a pessimist, it strikes me that things getting worse is really part of the point. It will drive off those who are awake to the danger and have the means to flee it. And it will make those who can't, and those who want the easy path, far more willing--indeed, glad--to give up liberty to attain it. No, do not discount the notion that economic hardship is an aim, not an unintended or unavoidable consequence.
So what’s your answer, Patrick?
Thank you. Truly. For asking the only question that matters. I'm sorry if I came off as someone who tears ideas down without providing alternative thoughts and options. That is not who I am.
Many are content to sit on the sidelines and dissect the collapse like it’s an academic exercise. Post-mortem punditry without the burden of prescription. I’m not interested in that. I never have been. I've been fighting these battles on campaigns, with time, effort, financial resources, sweat and tears for decades now. I can also see how my writing, especially something like this, might read like fatalism. Like I’m screaming about the problems with no intention of fixing them. That is not me.
I do believe in a path forward. I just don’t believe in a comfortable one.
As far as I can see, there are only two paths left. Others may see more. I don’t.
Path One: You resign yourself to the reality that this is a 40+ year fight. Not a campaign cycle. Not a news cycle. A generational project. I explain why that timeline is necessary here:
🔗 https://substack.com/@complexsimplicity/note/c-79872455
And then you do the quiet, grueling work of rebuilding from the dirt—showing up locally, school boards, city councils, state legislatures—because national power only reflects what’s rotting or thriving underneath. I wrote more on that here:
🔗 https://substack.com/home/post/p-156240226
Path Two: You become part of starving the machine—financially, culturally, structurally. You figure out how to stop feeding the apparatus that keeps this corpse animated. I laid out that angle here:
🔗 https://substack.com/home/post/p-152108087
Neither of these paths is clean. Neither comes with applause. Neither offers you the fantasy of fixing this in your lifetime. Neither is easy.
People generally do not like my ideas, because they are hard. Both of these ideas require real sacrifice—time, comfort, money, community, and sometimes your own peace. Sacrifice sucks. It’s slow. It’s lonely. But I don’t see a future without it. The only answer I see is a significant sacrifice from those of us who are still attached to reality.
Sacrificing for a future, we won’t benefit from.
But someone will.
And that, to me, is enough.
So again—thank you. Not just for calling me out. But for caring enough to ask the question most people are too afraid to face.
It's taken me a while to see things as I do now, much in the way you describe here. I've finally come to understand that there really *shouldn't* be an easy way out this, much as we might wish otherwise.
What we're losing now took millennia to build with knowledge born of pain and suffering. Like a brute force attack over the ages, plugging away one mistake after another, mankind at long last acquired the ability to improve upon its once brutal existence. Standing upon the shoulders of our forebears, we eventually achieved a rarity in human history: A democratic republic, founded in the morals and values of classical liberalism. This was and has always remained experimental rather than a cosmological certainty. Taken for granted, it's practically guaranteed to end in its destruction.
Like most things in life, what we've had is easier to maintain than to build, easier to destroy than maintain. We've neglected our responsibilities and now are in the destruction-over-maintenance phase. The longer the destruction continues, the more rebuilding is required. Unless we resign ourselves to happenstance and have the improbable fortune of being rescued by some unknown outside force, the only way out of this mess is through it. And we're still only dealing with the defeat of the authoritarian threat right now, not even the rebuilding part, should we succeed.
The easiest path forward in the near term is to give in to the lie, put on the red hat, and let your brain turn to goo as you abandon independent thought. If you're here reading this, you're probably not down with this option. The next easiest is to patiently yet minimally resist, hoping an unlikely hero saves you and you'll awaken from this nightmare to the comforts of the Before Times. Otherwise, you're going to have to do some real resistance somehow, and resistance, by definition, is hard.
This is just the immediate fight for control. Should we be fortunate enough to resist and overcome the authoritarian menace, we have to start rebuilding society and building is always harder than maintaining or destroying.
Should we succeed and find ourselves with a liberal democratic republic once more, it's imperative take to heart that we're all much better off with the relatively light responsibilities of maintenance than we ever are with construction or destruction. This gets at what you said about local politics; we need more civic education and engagement across all walks of life and at all levels of society. As citizens, we need to regularly exercise our values. The only way we can hope to avoid this path again is to remember the hard-won lessons learned. Regular engagement in remembrance of our past and making one's participation in society an integral part of what it means to have citizenship is our "easy" path in the long run.
The opposition would be well-served adopting the Navy SEAL adage: The only easy day was yesterday.
This is one of the strongest articulations I’ve read—not just of where we are, but of why it’s supposed to be this hard.
A republic cobbled together through agony and contradiction, pushed forward inch by inch through blood, error, protest, revision. For a brief window in history, it almost held. Not perfectly. Not equitably. But functionally. Enough to believe in.
Then we stopped believing it needed us.
You nailed it: We’re not even in the rebuilding phase yet. We’re still trying to survive the wrecking ball. Still fighting just to keep the lights on in the idea of shared reality. If we’re lucky we’ll come out the other side not to celebration, but to rubble. That’s when the real work begins. The harder work. The thankless work. The kind no one gets credit for in a news cycle.
We need to remember through action. Civic engagement not as a hashtag, but as identity. As habit. As the bare minimum of citizenship. Because you’re right—maintenance is lighter than destruction, but only if we don’t forget what happens when we stop maintaining.
The easy days are gone.
In 7 generations.
I agree this is a long haul—it took the GOP more than forty years to get here at the apex/nadir of political power. They were patient. The left? God no. If it isn't fixed now now now they stay home next election to teach Congress a lesson, thereby exacerbating the problem. Laws must be changed surrounding free speech. Lies must be reigned in. We also need to break up media monopolies that allow one RW billionaire to own most of the television and radio stations, and even newspapers (what are left of them) in huge swathes of the country. It's the only way to break the hold of the vast RW propoganda machine. Reagan broke up Ma Bell. It can be done. But we need the political will.
But to do that there have to be large majorities of Dems in both Houses to pass such legislation, and a Dem president has to be willing to pack SCOTUS, otherwise such laws would be ruled unconstitutional and we are right back at scratch. Same with campaign finance. It cannot happen until SCOTUS is changed. Why so many people don't get that is beyond me. And peope have to keep coming out and voting for Dems election after election after election. It's not one and done.
But I completely disagree with your suggestion that people take another option and flee the country. While the monied can "sacrifice" by moving to France, the rest of us who aren't as fortunate will sacrifice our health, well being, economic security, and freedom. Not exactly a fair trade off.
You’re still absolutely free to disagree.
But let’s be honest about what you’re saying.
You can keep framing emigration as some kind of luxury cruise for the monied elite, but that’s not reality. The vast majority of immigrants aren’t rich. They’re not fleeing to some fantasy of ease. They’re making sacrifices most Americans wouldn’t stomach for five minutes, leaving behind family, identity, language, safety, on the chance their kids might have a shot at something better.
That’s not comfort. That’s courage.
Pretending otherwise isn’t just inaccurate, it’s the same kind of unreality that corrodes everything we claim to be fighting against. If we’re going to demand truth from the MAGA cult, we better damn well be willing to live in it ourselves.
This isn’t about liking the options. None of them are good. This is about telling the truth about what they cost.
The truth is: Migration, when it’s chosen as a political and moral line in the sand, is not abandonment. It’s not indulgence. It’s sacrifice. It deserves to be named as such.
I fully understand that emigration isn’t a sacrifice you’re willing to make. I understand why. It’s a brutal, complicated, deeply personal decision.
Please don’t frame emigration, or immigrants, as wealthy vacationers chasing ease. That’s a comforting illusion designed to justify staying put, and it erases the real cost millions endure just to survive somewhere new.
Make the choice that’s right for you. Truly. But respect that others are doing the same. The fight for a future isn’t one-size-fits-all—and pretending it is only serves the system that’s already trying to break us.
Lived through the civil rights south , in a small Alabama rural town, of poverty and a few rich people. Here we are again in some ways, not all- there was progress.
Thank you for articulating this so methodically. I'm with you without condition.
I will be reading these substack articles. I keep realizing over and over that, at age 55, I will not be seeing the end of this story in my lifetime. In some ways, it's part of the eternal struggle against the forces of ignorance that people have been fighting since the first Homo sapiens tried to get his children to stop eating the shiny berries. We are so far past politics now, and I don't think politics or economics can solve our irreconcilable differences. In fact, once Trump was re-elected, I signed up to volunteer for a food bank that works to keep people housed, as we all know where this is going: hungry, homeless children. And when people reach that point, who will be there to help? MAGA or us?
As far as I'm concerned, it had better be us. And it might not be.
Cannot remember exact quote, or from who, but someone once defined "statesman" as a person committed to planting trees knowing he'd never see the shade.
A line from one of my favorite poems: "Invest in the millennium; plant sequoias." (Wendell Berry, "Mad Farmer's Liberation Front Manifesto"
Good question, but I'm afraid he answered it in the last line. We need to get to the ruins first. Then we rebuild it. Exactly what we're all afraid of.
Exactly what I’m seeing. Not quite four months into this and his supporters still making excuses for him and still unbelievably blaming Dems (ie He only won because they were so terrible,) I fear things will have to get much worse - primarily economically and health wise- before enough people start waking up. My husband and I have started making financial adjustments. Next on the To Do list are updated wills.
Yes. Same here. The excuses are endless, shameless, and completely impervious to contradiction. The worst part? They’re not even defending him anymore. They’re defending the need for him to be right. Because the alternative would mean confronting everything they ignored, enabled, or endorsed. Most of them just… won’t.
I agree with you—things will likely have to get a lot worse. Not because it’s inevitable, but because that’s how deep the delusion runs. Economic collapse, health crises, institutional breakdown. I also have a fear that none of it will be seen as consequence, just more proof the enemies need to be punished harder.
We aren't going to win back the hardcore MAGA. There were Germans decades later who still missed Hitler. THey're gone and they ain't coming back. But they are not half the country. They are maybe a third, which is a frighteningly large enough percentage. Until it breaks through like the Signal story, people are not aware and that is the media's fault because they don't cover what is happening with the immediacy and truthfulness it deserves. That's where it's up to us to use our own outlets—not just here, but X (if you're still there). bluesky, IG, FB, TikTok etc to spread the word. Email your friend that damning clip. Tell your veteran uncle what they are doing to the VA. Let your friend know that her grandma with alzheimer's in the senior's home may be coming to live with her parents if they cut Medicaid because unless they can pony up the thousands of dollars per month for her care, she'll be kicked out.
We aren't powerless and we aren't voiceless.
Actually, to be a bit of a pessimist, it strikes me that things getting worse is really part of the point. It will drive off those who are awake to the danger and have the means to flee it. And it will make those who can't, and those who want the easy path, far more willing--indeed, glad--to give up liberty to attain it. No, do not discount the notion that economic hardship is an aim, not an unintended or unavoidable consequence.
Of course it’s an aim. Autocrats want the people to be sick, poor and uneducated so they don’t have the wherewithal to resist.