It appears that the American experiment of self-government is in rapid decline. With over 600 mass shootings recorded in 2023 and a rematch of everyone’s favorite presidential candidates set for 2024, the public entertains solving generational crises by using gender-neutral pronouns or criminalizing cross-dressing. It’s fitting that the current President struggles to climb stairs and the previous one still brags about acing a “difficult” dementia screening assessment. To this point in American history, when doom looked imminent, enough people bothered to rise to the occasion and preserve the American system of government. Sadly, as the Greatest Generation passes away, the Baby Boomers and Millennials are in close competition to see who can be the worst generation in American history. The Boomers, opting for an early retirement and enjoying what’s left of Social Security while fighting Socialism by owning the libs, and the Millennials, flaunting what’s left of their youth and attempting to monetize their personality disorders on social media, are unwitting allies in the unraveling of the American social fabric. Perhaps before democracy in America is nothing but a fond memory, entirely gutted by apathy, ignorance, and corporate interests, the general public will realize that it was only ever an experiment – not an entitlement – one that is entirely dependent on the, selves, that make up that self-government.

During the 2016 election, it was said by many that the country was facing an existential crisis. But what does that even mean? It sounds fake and gay, so it must be some liberal propaganda, right? Well, it has something to do with existing, as the root of the word suggests. You know, the deep longing questions like – to be or not to be?More specifically, if we were to consult the philosopher who is often cited as the they/them responsible for creating existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard, he would tell us that an existential crisis is marked by an imbalance of possibility and necessity. As Kierkegaard writes in The Sickness unto Death, “A self that has no possibility is in despair, and likewise a self that has no necessity…runs away from itself in possibility, it has no necessity to which it is to return…the self becomes an abstract possibility…eventually everything seems possible, but this is exactly the point at which the abyss swallows up the self.” Possibility then becomes tyrannical when one’s reason for existence is defined by the next new thing, the tech update, the hip new organic totally not astro-turfed trend.

Necessity’s despair, however, is a lack of the very possibility that is all too easy to drown in. As Kierkegaard writes, “lacking possibility would be the same as being dumb. The necessary is like pure consonants, but to express them there must be possibility…To lack possibility means either that everything has become necessary for a person or that everything has become trivial…he for whom everything became necessity overstrains himself in life and is crushed in despair.” Necessity then will rob a self of life and all that is possible, as if by placing blinders on a horse and having them work the same job with no remote options or retirement plan till death.

In America circa 2024, where any celebrity or billionaire stands a chance at becoming commander-in-chief, where once level-headed conservative pragmatists have become wide-eyed delusional conspiracy theorists, where some propose abolishing the police while others await a real or staged alien invasion – it’s plain to see that the country is floundering through a spectacular existential crisis. Who in the multiverse is to blame for this calamity and how in the heck could it be fixed? While it seems that anyone and everyone at present can identify litanies of problems and conspiracies, at some point it will become necessary to use that time and brainpower to create solutions rather than just complain. But what do regular citizens have to do with fixing the country? Back when it took more than charisma, money, and fame to be considered for public office, a former President spoke on this issue and concluded that good government, in a democracy at least, depends primarily on the citizens.

In 1910 Theodore Roosevelt, a man whose face is carved into an American mountain to remind Americans that he is important, gave a speech worth remembering at a university in Paris. In the speech titled, Citizenship in a Republic, Roosevelt addressed the central and weighty role citizens play in maintaining a decent government. “A democratic republic such as ours,” Roosevelt stated, “represents the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with great responsibilities alike for good and evil. The success of republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme.” Roosevelt explains why the individual citizen is so critical to the health of democratic republics by stating that, “Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of the average citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness. But with you and us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed.” The glory or failure of people in a democratic society, according to Roosevelt, then depends more on the average citizen than on any elected official. What might seem like a great exaggeration by Roosevelt should truly not be regarded as anything but common sense, as democratic government is simply government by the common people. Roosevelt’s assertion, however, flies in the face of what seems to be agreed upon among 21st century Americans – that stuff is really bad because of corrupt politicians and what not.

While there is embarrassingly little that Americans will admit to agreeing about, a strong and continuously growing majority agree that stuff is bad and getting worse. According to a recent AP-NORC poll, a staggering eighty-five percent of Americans see the country as being on the wrong track. When asked what the biggest problem in American politics is, the most popular single answer in a recent pew study is simply – politicians. If only there was some way to keep unscrupulous, incompetent jerk-offs from becoming politicians. Naturally, one of the most commonly proposed and broadly supported solutions to the dilemma of ill willed public servants is to simply limit how long scumbag politicians can serve. According to a recent study by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, eighty-three percent of Americans support a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on congress. The public apparently acknowledges their inability to distinguish between competent judicious candidates and self-interested quacks and therefore wishes to correct the problem by limiting the time the fools they elect have to defraud them further. If politicians are indeed the biggest problem in American politics, and Americans truly want to return the ship of state to a steady course, it’s critical that Americans come to terms with the simple fact that they are the shadowy cabal responsible for empowering politicians in the first place. Instead, a cornucopia of conspiracies and a finger-pointing blame-game explains how politicians gained power, absolves the public of its civic responsibilities, and, perhaps most important of all, provides immersive real life entertainment. Like in a dystopian sport, the public is pitted against each other on Team Democrat or Team Republican, each blaming the other for all social ills. Meanwhile, most participants in this great drama are facing similar struggles with the cost of living, global and domestic political uncertainty, and trying to find some reason to believe that the future will be better than the past.

“Alright”, the angry and impatient American voter interjects, “if politicians aren’t the problem, there isn’t a shadow cabal running the world, and the common people are responsible for the fate of democracy, how exactly do we fix all the problems?” Roosevelt had much to say about this, but made clear what he thought was primary, writing, “Perhaps the most important thing the ordinary citizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has to remember in political life is that he must not be a sheer doctrinaire…the refined and cultured individual who from his library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic, and still more the mob-leader, and the insincere man who to achieve power promises what by no possibility can be performed, are not merely useless but noxious.” Roosevelt, in prescribing an ideal describes the exact opposite of the current state of the American political landscape as nearly everyone from the average voter to members of the Supreme Court have become sheer doctrinaires and true believers in a single party’s promises. Not only does ideology largely determine who Americans vote for, but as of late it has also encouraged them to relocate throughout the country in order to live around those of a similar political persuasion. As one transplant fleeing a conservative state for a liberal city recently told NPR, “We were looking at blue cities because we wanted to be with our own people.” Consequently, the number of counties with virtually no political competition, where presidential candidates won over 80% of the vote shot up from 6% in 2004 to 22% in 2020. Gradually, the country born out of rational compromise unravels into a playground dispute between Team Republican and Team Democrat, or, to put it how many seem to see it, team Freedom and team Socialism. Here too, Roosevelt has pragmatic thoughts to offer on what remains a conflict within the American identity, a balance between individualism and collectivism.

“Stop Democrats’ radical Socialist agenda,” the slogan goes, and many heed the call to oppose what they see as contrary to the American system. Roosevelt, a rugged individual if there ever was one, stated more than a century ago, “Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and yet we should remember that, as society develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can, under changed conditions, be performed with better results by common effort”. In other words, sometimes it just makes more sense to use the government to address certain issues. Currently, most any proposal made by Democrats is criticized by Republicans as being a sign of a tyrannical plan to establish an all powerful socialist government. But then, it never is quite clear what exactly modern Republicans are talking about when they talk about Socialism. Rather, Socialism for Republicans is a vague catch-all term to label anyone they oppose as a villainous anti-American. Roosevelt, again has pragmatic words on the subject to offer his 21st century party comrades – “It is quite impossible, and equally undesirable, to draw in theory a hard-and-fast line which shall always divide the two sets of cases. (Relying on individual initiative, or using the government)…For instance, when people live on isolated farms or in little hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its own drainage and water-supply; but the mere multiplication of families in a given area produces new problems which, because they differ in size, are found to differ not only in degree but in kind from the old; and the questions of drainage and water-supply have to be considered from the common standpoint. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizing to decide when this point is reached; it is a matter to be tested by practical experiment.” It is whether a policy actually works the best to address an issue that determines if it should be used then, not its association with ideology.

Roosevelt concludes the point with wisdom that the American system has yet to mature sufficiently to acknowledge that – “Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of the failure to agree on terminology. It is not good to be the slave of names. I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. The individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked very early in the growth of civilization, and we of to-day should in our turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft instead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity, to turn the tool-user more and more into the tool-owner…The deadening effect on any race of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system could not be overstated; it would spell sheer destruction…But this does not mean that we may not with great advantage adopt certain of the principles professed by some given set of men who happen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid to do so would be to make a mark of weakness on our part.” While considering Roosevelt’s point from the 21st century, it might appear at first that, what to him is a “mere matter of common sense”, that it is sometimes more practical to use the State than to rely on individual initiative, has been broadly accepted at present. From public roads, law enforcement, defense, Social Security, schools, libraries and in countless other ways, most Americans take for granted at least some active role for the government in addressing our collective needs and challenges. Despite being entirely absent of any coherent and sensible argument, the popular warning against radical leftist socialist democrats remains among the most potent sounded by Republican politicians. In the end, name calling has become a favorite debate strategy among many, so it’s no surprise that the current discourse is full of emotionally appealing language and little to no specifics on what sort of policy changes are being proposed to fix anything at all. It is, after all, much easier and engages audiences more to paint your opponent as a villain than to propose and pass impactful legislation. If MAGA Republicans are good at anything, it’s this. Take, for example, a resolution denouncing socialism passed by the House of Representatives in 2023.

Nearly everything about the House of Representative’s 2023 resolution denouncing socialism demonstrates this confusion regarding the subject. The resolution contains three pages, most of which is dedicated to listing the numbers of people murdered, starved, or imprisoned by various socialist dictators. There is a statement describing the representative’s feelings about socialism, but no clarification on what exactly constitutes a socialist policy or program. Finally, a quotation each from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is included as an authoritative reminder that socialism, whatever exactly is meant by that, is contrary to American values.

Perhaps most surprisingly, though the Congress is allegedly swimming with radical leftists, the resolution easily passed by a vote of 328-86-14. Even the party of socialists supported the resolution with 109 votes for, 86 against, and 14 voting “present”. The opposition to the resolution came largely from a lack of clarity on what was meant by socialism in the first place. This lack of clarity led some Democrats to propose an amendment to the resolution stating that programs such as Medicare and Social Security are not examples of Socialism, yet the Republican Rules Committee rejected the amendment. Among the Democrats raising concern about cuts to these programs, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis) claimed that cutting these programs was in fact the end goal of Republicans. “Here’s what this is really about: more and more members on the other side of the aisle are calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and many have referred to these programs as socialism throughout their existence…the Rules Committee, they showed their cards. Republicans refused an amendment to declare that Social Security and Medicare is not socialism…This resolution is little about intelligent discourse and everything to do about laying the groundwork to cut Social Security and Medicare.” Pocan’s concerns are not without merit as Republicans can’t help but to dream up and float ideas about privatizing or cutting such programs regardless of how popular they are. No doubt, the GOP presidential nominee and his campaign are still trying to figure out what exactly they mean when they propose cutting entitlements. Meanwhile, rugged individualist thought leaders on the right, such as Ben Shapiro, are straight to the point, saying, “No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old. Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem. Everybody that I know who is elderly, who has retired, is dead within five years.” Shapiro, who makes a living doing what so many millennials dream of, posting videos of themselves talking, has mastered the art of prescribing to others what is to him unimaginable. Fortunately for Ben and his would-be co-workers, he will never know the reality of working decade after decade for a paycheck that barely covers living expenses, not to mention saving for retirement. Simply put, the entire GOP project of fighting against radical socialists is nothing but a charade. Not sure how else to package and promote a political party hollowed out of all core values by a compulsion to deregulate and privatize all economic activity, the party has relied on dramatizing a battle against socialism to get voters’ attention. Sadly, despite lacking honesty, clarity, or coherence, it’s worked well. Forget those socialist dictators, or even what socialism is, the same people worried about a leftist dictator are cheering for a candidate that openly expresses the desire to exercise the total authority of a dictator. It is an absurd drama which would be entertaining if not for its adverse impact on hundreds of millions of people. Yet, it’s the very people, frustrated and struggling to get by, that perpetuate the absurdity whether by abstaining from the political process all together or by electing people beholden to ideology and lacking any desire to compromise with those they see as malevolent enemies instead of legitimate opposition.

America is not necessary. Its existence is barely a blip on the historical timeline of human history. Despite existing for less than three centuries, though, it has proven many things once thought impossible, possible. However imperfect, America developed a national identity based on laws rather than nationality, has proven and promoted democracy as a viable form of government around the world, gradually extended and promoted individual freedom domestically and globally, and perhaps most revolutionary of all – shown that, even in the time of monarchies, peacefully transitioning between ruling parties was possible. Now, after a few centuries of innovation, overcoming obstacles, and setting new precedents for individual freedom and opportunity, Americans have drifted far from the ideals described by Roosevelt. Instead of acknowledging that the success or failure of the country begins with and is primarily dependent upon how citizens conduct themselves, too many have become stuck in a narrow and resentful state of victimization where every problem is simply viewed as the fault of some comically evil opposition. Worse still, although it seems that most Americans across party lines agree that there is a myriad of crises facing the country, there is at the same time a general lack of any collective effort to imagine any possibility of overcoming the current state of frustration. Instead we watch as absurdity after absurdity leads us into a dystopian reality while doing nothing but dreaming up elaborate conspiracy theories that explain how it’s anyone’s fault but our own and worse still – that there’s just nothing that can be done about it.

Inevitably, at some point, people will realize that there will be no individual genius that single-handedly saves American democracy. Rather, the only way to avoid collapse is for average citizens to become more reasonable, informed, willing to compromise, and capable of seeing those they disagree with as an opportunity to learn and grow from rather than to convert or kill. It’s just a matter of reaching this conclusion before it’s too late.