Picture it: January 2029. Trump is gone, and the Democrats sweep in promising to restore democracy. The pundits will celebrate: "Democracy has been saved!" But anyone who's lived through the past decade knows better.
Democracy isn't a switch you flip or a pill you pop. It's a muscle, and America's been skipping leg day since at least the Reagan administration. The problem with "bringing back" democracy is that it suggests it was just temporarily misplaced. What we actually have is a house with termites in the foundation and the previous tenant who spray-painted "STOLEN ELECTION" across the walls before setting the curtains on fire.
You don't fix that in one election cycle. You fix it over decades. And first, you have to admit how deep the rot goes.
The Disease: Terminal Cynicism
America didn't catch authoritarianism like a head cold—it cultivated it like vintage wine, letting it ferment for decades. The symptoms were there long before Trump: gerrymandering turned elections into theater, the Supreme Court decided money was speech, cable news discovered rage was profitable, and social media created echo chambers so perfect that Americans could live in different realities while sharing the same zip code.
Trump didn't create this madness; he just had the shamelessness to say the quiet parts loud. He turned politics into professional wrestling, complete with manufactured feuds and an audience that forgot the difference between entertainment and governance.
By 2024, half the country thought the other half was literally trying to destroy America—and they were both kind of right.
Phase One: Emergency Room (2028-2030)
The new president walks into the Oval Office to find the democracy equivalent of a meth house. The first priority is pure triage: stop the bleeding before worrying about plastic surgery.
The Emergency Checklist:
Restore basic government functions (half the agencies are run by "acting" directors)
Rebuild the Justice Department after years of being Trump's personal law firm
Fix election integrity (the real kind, not the bamboo ballot kind)
Quarantine the crazy on social media platforms
This phase is ugly—two years minimum just to stabilize the patient, another year to convince the patient they want to get better.
Phase Two: Physical Therapy (2030-2035)
Once democracy is off life support, the real work begins. Think physical therapy for a political system that spent years in a coma.
The Rehab Program:
Campaign Finance Exorcism: Get money out of politics by overturning Citizens United
Voting Rights Reconstruction: Make voting easier and more meaningful through redistricting reform and ranked-choice voting
Media Literacy Boot Camp: Teach Americans to distinguish news from entertainment
Judicial Ethics Rehab: Establish actual standards for judges and term limits for the Supreme Court
Civic Education Renaissance: Teach how government actually works
Five years if you're lucky, ten if you're realistic. Expect setbacks, backlash, and moments when the whole project seems futile.
Phase Three: The Great Forgetting (2035-2045)
True stability arrives when an entire generation grows up without remembering what it felt like to watch democracy buckle. You want boring elections where the biggest controversy is municipal zoning laws. You want politicians who can share a beer after disagreeing about tax policy.
The goal is "total democracy"—not perfect, but stable and boring enough to withstand the next fever dream without emergency surgery.
But here's the catch: when democracy becomes boring, people stop paying attention. The generation that rebuilds democracy understands its value. The generation that inherits it takes it for granted. The generation after that starts looking for improvements—which often means tearing down the safeguards their grandparents built.
Phase Four: Eternal Vigilance (2045 and Beyond)
Every generation rediscovers that power corrupts and fear sells better than hope. The tools change—from radio demagogues to social media influencers—but human weaknesses remain constant.
The Maintenance Schedule:
Regular constitutional tune-ups
Ongoing civic education
Management of new technologies
Elite accountability systems
The dirty secret is that democracy is expensive—not just in tax dollars, but in attention, energy, and time. Most people would rather delegate those responsibilities, which is how you get democracy in name only.
The Bottom Line
The United States has always been two things: impossible ideals and a bare-knuckle fight for power. Trump didn't invent the rot—he just peeled back the drywall so we could smell what had been festering for decades.
The question isn't whether America can rebuild—humans are good at rebuilding. The question is whether Americans can stick with it after the initial enthusiasm wears off, after the work gets dull and progress gets slow.
Real democracy isn't sexy. It's paperwork and committee meetings and zoning disputes and school board elections where twelve people show up. It's politicians who speak in complete sentences and follow the law even when inconvenient. It's arguments about bike lane widths and compromises that leave everyone mildly dissatisfied.
If Americans can learn to love that boredom again—to recognize it as the sound of a system that works—then maybe by 2045, "total democracy" won't be an aspiration but a default setting.
Until then, the road back is long and full of potholes. But at least we're moving forward again. And in democracy, forward motion—however slow—beats standing still while arguing about the destination.
This is a beautiful recipe. One ingredient I would like to note, public education. Stupid is more dangerous than evil and public education has been dumbed down deeply. Education is the path to liberation, that’s why it’s been kicked aside and discredited. Thanx, Brett, for your writing.
Thank you, Bret. Nobody says it better. With this recipe carefully followed, hope for an actual democracy is almost feasible.