Can America Find Its Way Again?

How do societies that have lost their way under shitty leaders get back to “good.”

I’ve heard it all at this point.

“America is cooked.”

“America has always been like this.”

“There’s no redemption for the U.S.A.”

Maybe so. But I’m incredulously hopeful and when it comes to the country I was born in and loved with all my might as a child, I believe there is a way to make America truly a good place to call home. And it’s not going backwards. And it’s not just for white people. I believe there’s a way to make this country good for all people.

There’s no deprogramming machine, because once you ring a bell, it can’t be unrung. We can’t just zap people back to “good” once authoritarian leaders, propaganda machines and political movements have spent 250 years reshaping the landscape in which we all lived on top of. There is no magic moment when the bad ideas disappear and everyone suddenly agrees that they were wrong.

History doesn’t work that way.

When societies emerge from authoritarianism and political extremism that’s been drenched in propaganda, rebuilding takes time. It takes sturdy foundations. It takes accountability. And most importantly, it takes the willingness to fix the systems that allowed the damage to happen in the first place.

Throughout history, there’ve been recurring lessons in how societies have attempted to do this. Countless examples — the one that people remember most, is nazi Germany. And in every collapse, there are six crucial stages to fixing the mess we made for ourselves.

STAGE ONE

We remove the people who abused power and hold them accountable.

The individuals who committed crimes, abused state power or purposefully dismantled democratic institutions can’t be allowed to walk back into positions to fuck it all up again. They must never hold positions of power or positions of influence again. No redemption arcs allowed. Disqualified for life.

Those who committed crimes must face prosecution.

Those who did not commit prosecutable crimes, but helped undermine democratic institutions (looking at you Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer), need to be removed from positions where they can continue exercising political leverage. They can’t touch any facets of government with a ten foot pole. Retired, for life. Career change imminent.

This isn’t about revenge.

It’s about accountability.

A society can’t credibly say, never again, while putting the same people who helped create the problem back in charge of the goddamn machine that produced this crap in the first place.

STAGE TWO

Dismantle the machinery that sustained the regime.

Authoritarianism is never just one person. It’s an entire ecosystem. Trump wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on if it wasn’t for the yes-men, gold-diggers and ass-kissers he put in place. Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation ring a bell?

It relies on institutions, enforcement mechanisms, propaganda networks, political organizations and systems designed to make the ideology feel normal and inevitable.

After nazi Germany, dismantling that ugly machine meant eliminating organizations such as the Gestapo (ICE) and the nazi party apparatus (White Supremacist Groups) and confronting the propaganda structures (FOX News) that had helped normalize the regime.

The principle remains relevant that if institutions have been weaponized to enforce political ideology, terrorize communities, spread state propaganda, or place entire groups of people outside the protection of the law, those institutions have to be confronted and dismantled or reformed.

We can’t build democracy using the same bullshit that was designed to undermine it.

STAGE THREE

America is dumb. We know it. You know it. The whole world knows it and they’ve been laughing at us for years because of it. We have to rebuild our education around truth instead of indoctrination.

This may be the most important piece of all.

Authoritarian movements understand something democracies sometimes forget. That is they control what children are taught, they can influence what the next generation believes is normal.

Education can’t become a vehicle for state propaganda, religious indoctrination, racial mythology or political pseudoscience.

Children need access to history in its complexity. They need to learn ideas they disagree with. They need to understand that their government can be wrong and that questioning authority isn’t fucking treason.

A healthy education system doesn’t tell kids what they’re supposed to believe.

It teaches them how to think.

STAGE FOUR

Restore an independent press.

A free press is not supposed to be the government’s public relations department.

Journalist’s are supposed to investigate people in power. They’re supposed to ask uncomfortable questions. They’re supposed to expose corruption and challenge official narratives and hold governments accountable.

When media becomes dependent upon political power, billionaire ownership, ideological loyalty and access to government officials, that independence disappears. You get FOX and CNN.

To recover from this shitstorm of crappy journalism, we need journalists willing to say, “No, prove it.”

“Show us the evidence.”

“Who benefits? Who get’s hurt? What aren’t you telling us?”

That’s literally journalism’s job.

STAGE FIVE

Fix the systems that allowed the authoritarianism to happen.

This is where simply removing one leader fails. All of them sons-a-bitches need to bounce.

If the underlying systems remain unchanged, another leader can eventually walk through the same door. Same evil man, different skin suit.

Democratic recovery requires examining the structures that allowed the breakdown in the first place. It’s the electoral systems, political representation, checks and balances, courts, oversight committees, corruption safeguards, and the independence of public institutions.

The goal IS NOT just replacing one political party with another.

We need to build the institutions strong enough that no political party or individual man or woman can easily capture the entire system again.

Democracy can’t depend on everyone in power to be a good person.

It has to be engineered to survive the bad ones.

STAGE SIX

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Anyway, back to stage six.

Stage six requires us to recognize the victims and make repair possible.

Sometimes the hardest step is acknowledging what actually happened to people. Authoritarian movements frequently convince their supporters that they were the victims.

The immigrant is supposedly taking their job. The outsider is supposedly destroying their culture. The journalist is supposedly attacking them. The minority group is supposedly the enemy.

Meanwhile, the people actually harmed by government policy become invisible. When’s the last time you checked in on your disabled neighbor or the little old lady down the road barely able to feed herself now that SNAP benefits were cut or hugged your trans son or daughter and told them you loved them or spoke to the immigrant who worked at that one store you go to every so often that would always give you the nicest compliments and even throw in a little extra on your tab?

Check on them. Really ask how they’re doing.

CARE.

Recovery requires telling the truth about who was harmed, recognizing those victims and, where appropriate, providing compensation, restitution, legal remedies, or other forms of repair.

And this matters.

Because we can’t effectively challenge propaganda without addressing the emotional story underneath it. People don’t cling to political movements solely because of facts… obviously. MAGA is a prime example.

They cling to identities and communities.

They cling to the feeling that someone finally understood them. And if we want to really change hearts and minds, we can’t shame a society into healing.

The beliefs don’t just disappear overnight.

We cant beat the beliefs out of people through humiliation, collective punishment or endless demands that they publicly confess how fucking stupid they were. That doesn’t produce underatanding. It only pisses them off more and they’ll dive deeper into defensiveness.

It feeds denial, resentment, conspiracy theories, and nostalgia for the so-called, “good old days.”

If we really want people to abandon an ideology, we have to give them somewhere to go afterward. Prison, yes. But not everybody has to go there. Most just need a sense of belonging. They need a reality that is more compelling than the bullshit they’ve been living in.

This means, functioning institutions, reliable education, independent journalism, consequences for people who abuse power, protection for people who were harmed, and enough time for people to process the fact that the world they believed in wasn’t what they thought it was.

Because the way out of this darkness this country has sunk down into, isn’t another person promising to save us. No. It’s rebuilding a system that doesn’t need saving in the first place.

We got this. Love you guys.

~Eevie

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