I’m seeing this as transmission failure. 435 House seats and 33 Senate seats are in play this November. Since it’s unlikely that buying a whole new car will be feasible, it’s time to rebuild the transmission. Get rid of the old broken parts and put some new ones in.
That’s a sharp metaphor and an accurate diagnosis. The engine isn’t the problem; it’s how power is transferred. When representation slips, nothing people demand actually reaches the wheels. Rebuilding the transmission means primaries, accountability, new candidates, and retiring parts that no longer engage. It’s messy, but it beats stalling out.
You’re a good person, “Tom Joad”. And like myself/by myself, unable to put even a tiny dent on this terribly dysfunctional American government. The task requires the same indefatigable energy & commitment that the Patriots exhibited 1775 - 1782.
As we plunge headlong toward what I believe will be THE defining moment of this era - the Congressional elections - I do not yet see enough evidence to support that the mountain will be climbed then, or ever. Hope I’m wrong, albeit hope is not a strategy.
I’ve been rewatching “The West Wing” on Netflix. In the first season, episode 20, the President’s approval numbers are in the cellar, and Congressional leaders in his own party are leaning on him to take positions on issues he fundamentally is (and was) opposed to, in order to protect “everyone’s” professional status and in the interests and “party unity.” This leaning also comes with threats to the continuance his administration, of course.
It an episode that reminded me of how political learning gets in the way of advocating for and acting on behalf the people.
I watched it with tears in my eyes and disillusion (recognition) in my heart, only two nights ago. Your essay this morning only drove the nail in deeper. If you haven’t watched it recently, I urge you to give it a look.
That episode hits because it strips away the romance and shows the trap: survival first, people second. “Party unity” becomes a euphemism for protecting careers and power, not principles. The tears make sense,recognition often hurts more than surprise. Fiction, yes, but uncomfortably faithful.
I get this completely. The West Wing hits differently if you’ve actually been around DC long enough to know how rare even the pretense of good-faith governing has become. That mix of optimism and nostalgia makes sense,it’s competence porn, but also a reminder of a time when embarrassment, humility, and trying still mattered.
Those moments you mention,the self-awareness, the willingness to look foolish, the assumption that governing is hard but worth doing,feel almost radical now. It wasn’t perfect or realistic, but it aspired to something bigger than grievance and performance.
I've gotten hooked on The West Wing! Ironic, for two related reasons: I've been working in DC for the past 30 years (no, not in the government, and I'm not a lawyer either, just work in close quarters with them), and I never watched the show when it was airing. But I've really gotten into it.
My own take is more optimistic and nostalgic at the same time, an odd combination, to be sure. It calls to mind a time when there was at least a pretense of people wanting to get things done despite partisan and intra-party divisions.
It has its light moments, too, such as when one staffer tells the press secretary, "you're all a bunch of idiots, you know that?", and the press secretary responds, "well in our defense, we do know that." Another entire episode is devoted to a Q and A with college students, where another senior staffer recounts a "typical" (no such thing) day in his life, and he very honestly but light heartedly tells how he made a complete idiot out of himself.
I know this is getting off topic; I just saw The West Wing mentioned and couldn't resist! Bartlet for President?
I'm very glad to have come upon your corner of Substack. I'm about your age but have lived in Los Angeles my whole life. We have many of the same beliefs and viewpoints but our perspectives are so different. It's refreshing for me to read a Nebraskan's takes on the things that drive me crazy and anger me so deeply. The first thing I ever wrote on the Internet was back in 2020. Seems so quaint now, but it also addresses some of the points you made in this essay. You might enjoy it. https://medium.com/@scinrb/starting-somewhere-953893788fc
Thank you so much for this,I really appreciate the kind words. I love hearing from people who share similar values but come at them from such different places. That contrast between Los Angeles and Nebraska is exactly where interesting perspective lives.
I read your Starting Somewhere piece and really enjoyed it. There’s an honesty and willingness to begin before everything is fully formed that resonates a lot with what I’m trying to explore too. Thanks for sharing it and for reaching out.-TJ
My pleasure. I'm not prolific enough to keep anyone's attention, so I don't care about trying to build an audience! But your work is so good that I think a lot of people would want to read your stuff. They just have to know you're there.
Chris Zappa from Gonzo Report is in the same boat. Not sure if you know him, but you two are of a like mind and going at it from different perspectives, as well.
P.S, I'm not on Medium, so couldn't "like" it, but I agree on all counts with coming together on common issues, Steve. There are many, and we need to be conciliatory, rather than combative. There's always a path if we look for it. Cheers to that!
No! Conciliation and arbitration are the roads to mediocrity!
I don't know about the Law in the States but in Australia, the statue law is that you cannot be forced to arbitration, no matter what the fine print in your one sided contract says. A very good Law!
I’ve evolved on that as well. Yes, I still believe that we have more similarities than differences with most Republicans. But there is no way to reason with those who have become cult members.
I had to laugh at this, Steve. I recently revisited something I wrote back at the beginning of "round one" with the orange one. Also seems quaint in retrospect. And very naive given what I know now...
There are two key things I love about this essay Tom. The first is your point about corruption and learning. And it made me think that actually that is what corruption is even in the traditional sense—learning what the system is teaching you (when we expand our idea of “the system” wider). Because the system that we are all operating in in the world is really based on the logics of winning, of outcompeting other individuals to gain an advantage and then using that advantage to favour you. When we optimise for winning, we end up with the world we have. Maybe corruption is just learning how to win. And the other part I loved was this brilliant statement, “you cannot fix a system using the people the system selected for”. Again, I was reading the wider implications of this, rather than only in the context of US politics. We are doing this all the time—entrusting the redesign of systems to those who have been successful in them. This is how the success-to-the-successful systems archetype works. Reinforcing certain characteristics and values and behaviours. That’s how the economy works too. And it’s why we have such extreme wealth inequality. Thanks once again for a great read.
Thank you,this is such a generous, rigorous reading, and you actually sharpen the argument in ways I didn’t fully articulate.
I really love your framing that corruption isn’t just moral failure but learning: internalizing what the system rewards and optimizing for it. If the dominant logic is winning, outcompeting, and converting advantage into protection, then corruption becomes less a deviation than a form of fluency. That’s chilling and clarifying.
And yes, exactly on the second point. We keep asking systems to reinvent themselves by elevating the very traits they selected for in the first place. Success-to-the-successful isn’t a bug; it’s the engine. Politics, markets, institutions,same pattern, same outcome: reinforcement, concentration, inequality.
I’m grateful for this response. It pushes the essay beyond US politics and into the deeper, more uncomfortable terrain it probably belongs in.
Having been involved, in a minor way, with electeds at the local, state and federal level, I can say from experience that even when the will is there, the system is so irreversibly engineered to cater to their interests rather than “we the people.”
Perverse and frustrating.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller
Exactly. Proximity teaches the hard lesson: the system isn’t failing,it’s doing what it was designed to do, just not for the public. Even good intentions get absorbed and neutralized.
That’s why Fuller matters here. You don’t beat a self-preserving machine head-on. You make it irrelevant by building something better outside it.
Tom - I bought you a coffee. It’s the least I could do for your excellent posts.
I’m with you man. I live in eastern Massachusetts and I relate to everything that you say. I say this with the privilege of living in a state that still serves its people, invests in its people. But we have a federal government that does the opposite now - only takes from its people. Works to oppress them. And the powerful people in government are doing nothing to stop it, republicans first but also democrats. That’s why I’m with you. We need fundamental change. Term limits. Open Primaries. Change state laws to prevent corporations from contributing to campaigns, because that’s where corporations are instituted, not at the federal government. These things can be done in the places where we still have power as citizens.
All we can do is come together and start from the ground up. That’s my goal for the year ahead. That’s why I joined the sustainability committee that’s part of my Town government! Monthly meetings in an unpaid official position to find ways to make my town better.
Thank you for this and for the coffee. Truly. That kind of tangible solidarity matters more than people realize.
What you’re describing is exactly the point I keep circling: the contrast between states that still try to serve their people and a federal system that increasingly extracts, concentrates, and protects power. And you’re right to name it plainly,Republicans are leading the charge, but Democrats’ inertia and accommodation have real consequences too.
I really appreciate how concrete your vision is. Term limits. Open primaries. Cutting corporate money off at the statelevel, where it actually can be done. That’s not abstract rage,that’s strategy.
And joining your town’s sustainability committee? That’s the work. Unpaid, unglamorous, local, persistent. That’s how legitimacy is rebuilt,from the ground up, by people who refuse to disengage even when the larger system feels rotten.
Different states, same fight. I’m grateful to be in it with people like you.
Term limits won't fix a thing. Unless you also term-limit lobbyists. As one of my favourite bloggers wrote, "You cannot fix a system using the people the system selected for." Term-limit our representatives, and those who already have undue influence over them will gain more power.
I agree that there are deep, deep roots to this problem. You can't do that by pulling up the visible parts. Like horsetail, with ten-foot roots, "the system" has evolved so that if you pull on the visible bits, they break off, and the root sends up a new shoot in days — one that the nutrient-holding root has even *more* control over.
I blame the Foundering Fathers. In their zeal to distance themselves from England, they wilfully dismissed half-a-millennium of the evolution of democracy, going back to the Magna Carta.
The two-party system is a fundamental problem. Talk about institutional memory! There can never be reform as long as it must come from one of the two dominant parties. The US today is a lot like Russia, but with one more party.
Abandoning the Westminster System for something totally new and untried has failed, and itself should be abandoned. The most stable democracies in the world are overwhelmingly parliamentary and multi-party.
Multiple parties allow new ideas to infiltrate… albeit slowly. And the parliamentary system tends to reduce the "bipolar effect" that the US suffers so deeply from: "You're either with us, or them." Floor-crossings are much more common, which holds parties accountable.
I'm not claiming these two things make for a perfect government, but they had five hundred years of evolution and fine-tuning before the arrogant Foundering Fathers decided they needed something completely new and different.
A first step would be ranked voting, which would allow a start to a thriving multi-party system. NOT "proportional representation", which specifically gives party loyalty more weight than representation.
You're absolutely right that term limits won't fix the structural problems. The two-party system. The lobbyist capture. The campaign finance nightmare. The abandonment of parliamentary traditions that actually work. All of it.
And you're right that I quoted myself,"You cannot fix a system using the people the system selected for",and then proposed term limits as a solution, which does seem to contradict the entire premise.
But here's what I'm actually saying: I don't think we can fix this.
Not through reform. Not through better rules. Not through ranked-choice voting or multi-party systems or parliamentary democracy or any of the structural changes that countries with functioning democracies have.
Because those changes require the people currently in power to vote for systems that reduce their power. They require Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell and every other lifer to say, "Yes, let's make it easier to replace us."
They won't.
The Argument for Chaos
Term limits aren't a solution. They're a controlled demolition.
You're right that lobbyists would gain even more power over rookie legislators who don't know the system. You're right that institutional memory matters. You're right that we'd get more grandstanding and less actual governance.
Good.
Because what we have now is a perfectly optimized machine for producing the appearance of democracy while ensuring nothing threatens the donor class. The institutional memory you're worried about losing is the institutional memory of how to kill reform. The expertise we'd sacrifice is expertise in preventing change.
Yes, lobbyists would have more power over term-limited legislators. But they already have all the power. What we'd lose is the veneer of legitimacy that comes from electing the same people for forty years while pretending they represent us.
I'd rather have obvious capture than disguised capture.
Why Parliamentary Systems Won't Save Us
You're absolutely right that parliamentary democracies with multiple parties are more stable and functional. The Westminster system evolved over centuries. It works better than what we have.
We're not getting it.
Not because it's a bad idea. Because the people who would have to implement it are the exact people who benefit from the current system. You think Chuck Schumer is going to champion a move to parliamentary democracy? Mitch McConnell is going to embrace ranked-choice voting that could empower third parties?
The system you're describing requires a constitutional convention or amendments that will never pass. It requires the Democratic and Republican parties to voluntarily reduce their duopoly. It requires politicians to trade their personal power for better governance.
They won't do it.
So yes, your solution is better than mine. And yes, mine won't actually fix anything. But mine is possible,barely,and yours isn't.
The Foundering Fathers
I love that typo. "Foundering Fathers." Perfect.
You're right that they threw out centuries of evolved democracy to try something new. And you're right that it's failed. The two-party system is structural. The presidential system creates the "with us or against us" dynamic you're describing. The whole design is adversarial rather than collaborative.
And it's not changing.
Not through reform from within. Because the people inside the system selected for by the system cannot dismantle the system that selected them. That's not cynicism. That's observation.
What I'm Actually Arguing For
Term limits aren't a fix. They're an acknowledgment that we can't fix this.
What I want is for the system to be so obviously broken, so transparently corrupt, so impossibly dysfunctional that people stop believing in it. Stop thinking it works. Stop defending it because they've been taught to respect institutions.
I want the chaos that comes from rookie legislators who don't know which fights are already over. Who waste time on impossible reforms. Who haven't learned to perform opposition instead of actual opposition.
Not because that will fix anything. But because the current system's greatest strength is that it looks functional. It looks like democracy. It produces the aesthetics of representation while ensuring nothing changes.
Term limits would strip that away. Would make it obvious that lobbyists run everything. Would expose that the emperor has no clothes.
And maybe,maybe,when enough people see that, they'll stop trying to reform a system that cannot be reformed and start building something new.
Ranked-Choice Voting
You're right that this should be step one. And you're right that proportional representation empowers party loyalty over actual representation.
Ranked-choice voting could break the duopoly. Could allow third parties to actually compete. Could reduce the "with us or them" binary that's killing us.
I support it completely.
I also don't think we're getting it. Not nationally. Not in my lifetime. Because the two parties that would have to pass it are the two parties it would threaten.
Some states will get it. Some cities. And that's good. But it won't scale to the federal level because the federal level is controlled by the exact people who benefit from the current system.
What This Is Really About
I'm not arguing that term limits would fix democracy. I'm arguing that democracy is already broken, and I'd rather watch it fail obviously than watch it fail slowly while pretending to work.
You're arguing for the system we should have. I'm arguing for accepting that we'll never get it from the people currently in charge.
You want ranked-choice voting, parliamentary democracy, multiple parties, and evolved systems that actually work. I want those things too.
But since we're not getting them, I'll settle for making it impossible to pretend the current system works.
The Horsetail Problem
Your metaphor is perfect. Pull on the visible growth and the ten-foot root just sends up another shoot.
So what do you do with horsetail?
You can't pull it up. The roots are too deep. You can try to dig them out, but you'll miss pieces and it'll come back. You can poison it, but that poisons everything else too.
What actually works: Stop feeding it. Stop giving it the conditions it needs to thrive. Make the environment hostile to its growth.
The political system is the same. You can't pull it up from within. You can't reform it using its own tools. You can't vote it out using the voting system it controls.
What you can do: Stop pretending it's legitimate. Stop defending it because you're supposed to respect institutions. Stop feeding it the one thing it needs to survive,your belief that it works.
Term limits don't fix the root. They just make it impossible to pretend the plant is healthy.
You're Right
Your solution is better than mine. Parliamentary democracy with ranked-choice voting and multiple parties would be better than what we have. It would be better than my chaotic term-limited nightmare.
But we're not getting your solution. The people who could give it to us won't, because they benefit from not giving it to us.
So I'll take the chaos. I'll take the obvious failure over the disguised failure. I'll take the rookie legislators who don't know what they're doing over the lifers who know exactly what they're doing and choose to do it anyway.
Not because it's a solution. Because it's acknowledgment that there isn't one.
‘Ranked voting at the local and state level, which fosters new ideas via multiple parties. At some point, the dominant paradigm gets "shaded out" from below, rather than trying to attack it from above.’
►So what do you do with horsetail? You can't pull it up. The roots are too deep. You can try to dig them out, but you'll miss pieces and it'll come back. You can poison it, but that poisons everything else too. What actually works: Stop feeding it… Stop feeding it the one thing it needs to survive, your belief that it works.◀︎
Thanks for brilliantly completing my metaphor!
I've dealt with horsetail. I crowd it out.
Tall cover-crops will stop "feeding" it by denying it the sunlight it needs.
Perhaps that suggests a different metaphorical coping strategy. Ranked voting at the local and state level, which fosters new ideas via multiple parties. At some point, the dominant paradigm gets "shaded out" from below, rather than trying to attack it from above.
That's why I chose Door Number Three, some 20 years ago. After Dubya was re(s)elected, I figured things couldn't get any worse! Boy, was *I* wrong!
I would not dare to say anyone with insight into the hopelessness of the situation should just leave. But it was a good choice for me. I looked at my ticking biological clock, and decided that I had to leave, or be hopelessly stuck with the dysfunction for the rest of my life.
As someone who preferred living lightly and close to the land, I saw the same statistics you see in Nebraska. Join the corporate agribiz class, or suicide. Earl Butz said, "Get big, or get out!" So, I got out.
I was able to form a co-op farm, feed many people via local markets, keep a roof overhead, and make mortgage payments, and still have $10-$20 grand left at the end of the year, doing small, artisanal farming.
The main thing that let me do that: universal healthcare.
The money I had left at the end of each year of artisanal farming would all go to the wealthcare industry in the US.
And that happened because of a thriving third-party that has never formed a national government!
This is impossible in the US, because a third-party Tommy Douglas is impossible in the US. The wealthcare industry has its thumb on the scale of both US parties.
It seems we're in agreement that there's no solution. I have lots of relatives and friends in the US, and wish you luck, and offer my support in any way I can.
Not sure why you felt the need to highlight three of the least corrupt members of Congress. AOC, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Of course they are part of the system. They are in Congress. But they are the best part, speaking truth to power. The rest, like My Two senators, Schumer and Gillibrand are definitely corporate Democrats. Don’t know if they do insider trading but they are corrupt in their way by being subservient to their donors. But you are wrong in highlighting those three fighters.
My point in mentioning them wasn’t to equate them with corporate Democrats or to flatten all distinctions. It was to underline something more uncomfortable: that even the best actors still operate inside a system that constrains, absorbs, and disciplines dissent. Being “part of the system” doesn’t mean morally equivalent to Schumer or Gillibrand, whose subservience to donors is its own quieter form of corruption. It means being subject to the same structural pressures, rules, and limits, even when you’re fighting against them.
This is a powerful reminder that systems are engineered to protect themselves, not to serve the people. I love how you show that it’s not just rules or procedures—it’s the people the system elevates, and the incentives they internalize. The comparison between “perfected theater” and real governance hits hard, and the tension you describe between institutional memory and chaos feels so real.
I also found the personal touch—the letters you keep, the automated replies—striking. It’s a quiet act of witnessing, of accountability, that feels almost heroic in its persistence. Even if nothing changes, someone is recording it. Someone remembers. That’s a kind of resistance in itself.
We need serious political reform in this country. Not because the system is bad but because the people who have taken advantage of it resist real, actual, effective change for the betterment of the citizens. Hold Fast 🇺🇸
I’m seeing this as transmission failure. 435 House seats and 33 Senate seats are in play this November. Since it’s unlikely that buying a whole new car will be feasible, it’s time to rebuild the transmission. Get rid of the old broken parts and put some new ones in.
That’s a sharp metaphor and an accurate diagnosis. The engine isn’t the problem; it’s how power is transferred. When representation slips, nothing people demand actually reaches the wheels. Rebuilding the transmission means primaries, accountability, new candidates, and retiring parts that no longer engage. It’s messy, but it beats stalling out.
The transmission of power and knowledge
You’re a good person, “Tom Joad”. And like myself/by myself, unable to put even a tiny dent on this terribly dysfunctional American government. The task requires the same indefatigable energy & commitment that the Patriots exhibited 1775 - 1782.
As we plunge headlong toward what I believe will be THE defining moment of this era - the Congressional elections - I do not yet see enough evidence to support that the mountain will be climbed then, or ever. Hope I’m wrong, albeit hope is not a strategy.
I’ve been rewatching “The West Wing” on Netflix. In the first season, episode 20, the President’s approval numbers are in the cellar, and Congressional leaders in his own party are leaning on him to take positions on issues he fundamentally is (and was) opposed to, in order to protect “everyone’s” professional status and in the interests and “party unity.” This leaning also comes with threats to the continuance his administration, of course.
It an episode that reminded me of how political learning gets in the way of advocating for and acting on behalf the people.
I watched it with tears in my eyes and disillusion (recognition) in my heart, only two nights ago. Your essay this morning only drove the nail in deeper. If you haven’t watched it recently, I urge you to give it a look.
That episode hits because it strips away the romance and shows the trap: survival first, people second. “Party unity” becomes a euphemism for protecting careers and power, not principles. The tears make sense,recognition often hurts more than surprise. Fiction, yes, but uncomfortably faithful.
I get this completely. The West Wing hits differently if you’ve actually been around DC long enough to know how rare even the pretense of good-faith governing has become. That mix of optimism and nostalgia makes sense,it’s competence porn, but also a reminder of a time when embarrassment, humility, and trying still mattered.
Those moments you mention,the self-awareness, the willingness to look foolish, the assumption that governing is hard but worth doing,feel almost radical now. It wasn’t perfect or realistic, but it aspired to something bigger than grievance and performance.
And yes.
Bartlet for America.
I've gotten hooked on The West Wing! Ironic, for two related reasons: I've been working in DC for the past 30 years (no, not in the government, and I'm not a lawyer either, just work in close quarters with them), and I never watched the show when it was airing. But I've really gotten into it.
My own take is more optimistic and nostalgic at the same time, an odd combination, to be sure. It calls to mind a time when there was at least a pretense of people wanting to get things done despite partisan and intra-party divisions.
It has its light moments, too, such as when one staffer tells the press secretary, "you're all a bunch of idiots, you know that?", and the press secretary responds, "well in our defense, we do know that." Another entire episode is devoted to a Q and A with college students, where another senior staffer recounts a "typical" (no such thing) day in his life, and he very honestly but light heartedly tells how he made a complete idiot out of himself.
I know this is getting off topic; I just saw The West Wing mentioned and couldn't resist! Bartlet for President?
Competence porn is as good a descriptor as I’ve heard for this series.
I could go along with that.
Great work Tom! I hope your new year has started out well.
Thank you!!
Me too, "Tom".
My number in Australia is +61433618353
E- Burnell51@ProtonMail.com
Cheers
I'm very glad to have come upon your corner of Substack. I'm about your age but have lived in Los Angeles my whole life. We have many of the same beliefs and viewpoints but our perspectives are so different. It's refreshing for me to read a Nebraskan's takes on the things that drive me crazy and anger me so deeply. The first thing I ever wrote on the Internet was back in 2020. Seems so quaint now, but it also addresses some of the points you made in this essay. You might enjoy it. https://medium.com/@scinrb/starting-somewhere-953893788fc
Thank you so much for this,I really appreciate the kind words. I love hearing from people who share similar values but come at them from such different places. That contrast between Los Angeles and Nebraska is exactly where interesting perspective lives.
I read your Starting Somewhere piece and really enjoyed it. There’s an honesty and willingness to begin before everything is fully formed that resonates a lot with what I’m trying to explore too. Thanks for sharing it and for reaching out.-TJ
I have been trying to get some traction on Medium but haven’t had much luck
My pleasure. I'm not prolific enough to keep anyone's attention, so I don't care about trying to build an audience! But your work is so good that I think a lot of people would want to read your stuff. They just have to know you're there.
Chris Zappa from Gonzo Report is in the same boat. Not sure if you know him, but you two are of a like mind and going at it from different perspectives, as well.
No I don’t think so. I’ll just hang out here till people get tired of me.😀
P.S, I'm not on Medium, so couldn't "like" it, but I agree on all counts with coming together on common issues, Steve. There are many, and we need to be conciliatory, rather than combative. There's always a path if we look for it. Cheers to that!
No! Conciliation and arbitration are the roads to mediocrity!
I don't know about the Law in the States but in Australia, the statue law is that you cannot be forced to arbitration, no matter what the fine print in your one sided contract says. A very good Law!
I’ve evolved on that as well. Yes, I still believe that we have more similarities than differences with most Republicans. But there is no way to reason with those who have become cult members.
I had to laugh at this, Steve. I recently revisited something I wrote back at the beginning of "round one" with the orange one. Also seems quaint in retrospect. And very naive given what I know now...
There are two key things I love about this essay Tom. The first is your point about corruption and learning. And it made me think that actually that is what corruption is even in the traditional sense—learning what the system is teaching you (when we expand our idea of “the system” wider). Because the system that we are all operating in in the world is really based on the logics of winning, of outcompeting other individuals to gain an advantage and then using that advantage to favour you. When we optimise for winning, we end up with the world we have. Maybe corruption is just learning how to win. And the other part I loved was this brilliant statement, “you cannot fix a system using the people the system selected for”. Again, I was reading the wider implications of this, rather than only in the context of US politics. We are doing this all the time—entrusting the redesign of systems to those who have been successful in them. This is how the success-to-the-successful systems archetype works. Reinforcing certain characteristics and values and behaviours. That’s how the economy works too. And it’s why we have such extreme wealth inequality. Thanks once again for a great read.
Thank you,this is such a generous, rigorous reading, and you actually sharpen the argument in ways I didn’t fully articulate.
I really love your framing that corruption isn’t just moral failure but learning: internalizing what the system rewards and optimizing for it. If the dominant logic is winning, outcompeting, and converting advantage into protection, then corruption becomes less a deviation than a form of fluency. That’s chilling and clarifying.
And yes, exactly on the second point. We keep asking systems to reinvent themselves by elevating the very traits they selected for in the first place. Success-to-the-successful isn’t a bug; it’s the engine. Politics, markets, institutions,same pattern, same outcome: reinforcement, concentration, inequality.
I’m grateful for this response. It pushes the essay beyond US politics and into the deeper, more uncomfortable terrain it probably belongs in.
Having been involved, in a minor way, with electeds at the local, state and federal level, I can say from experience that even when the will is there, the system is so irreversibly engineered to cater to their interests rather than “we the people.”
Perverse and frustrating.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller
Exactly. Proximity teaches the hard lesson: the system isn’t failing,it’s doing what it was designed to do, just not for the public. Even good intentions get absorbed and neutralized.
That’s why Fuller matters here. You don’t beat a self-preserving machine head-on. You make it irrelevant by building something better outside it.
Tom - I bought you a coffee. It’s the least I could do for your excellent posts.
I’m with you man. I live in eastern Massachusetts and I relate to everything that you say. I say this with the privilege of living in a state that still serves its people, invests in its people. But we have a federal government that does the opposite now - only takes from its people. Works to oppress them. And the powerful people in government are doing nothing to stop it, republicans first but also democrats. That’s why I’m with you. We need fundamental change. Term limits. Open Primaries. Change state laws to prevent corporations from contributing to campaigns, because that’s where corporations are instituted, not at the federal government. These things can be done in the places where we still have power as citizens.
All we can do is come together and start from the ground up. That’s my goal for the year ahead. That’s why I joined the sustainability committee that’s part of my Town government! Monthly meetings in an unpaid official position to find ways to make my town better.
Thank you for this and for the coffee. Truly. That kind of tangible solidarity matters more than people realize.
What you’re describing is exactly the point I keep circling: the contrast between states that still try to serve their people and a federal system that increasingly extracts, concentrates, and protects power. And you’re right to name it plainly,Republicans are leading the charge, but Democrats’ inertia and accommodation have real consequences too.
I really appreciate how concrete your vision is. Term limits. Open primaries. Cutting corporate money off at the statelevel, where it actually can be done. That’s not abstract rage,that’s strategy.
And joining your town’s sustainability committee? That’s the work. Unpaid, unglamorous, local, persistent. That’s how legitimacy is rebuilt,from the ground up, by people who refuse to disengage even when the larger system feels rotten.
Different states, same fight. I’m grateful to be in it with people like you.
It must change and this is the year.
Fingers crossed
Excellent article. For some strange reason I cannot repost.
This 👉🏽 “You become effective at operating within a system that doesn’t work, and you call that success.”
Your work, Your wisdom. Your witness. It all matters so very much, Tom.
And I love Patricia. Most especially for how she loves you :)
Thank you so much!!
I think it's probably All just as crooked as it looks...and we get to foot the bill for it all.
That pretty much sums it up.
Term limits won't fix a thing. Unless you also term-limit lobbyists. As one of my favourite bloggers wrote, "You cannot fix a system using the people the system selected for." Term-limit our representatives, and those who already have undue influence over them will gain more power.
I agree that there are deep, deep roots to this problem. You can't do that by pulling up the visible parts. Like horsetail, with ten-foot roots, "the system" has evolved so that if you pull on the visible bits, they break off, and the root sends up a new shoot in days — one that the nutrient-holding root has even *more* control over.
I blame the Foundering Fathers. In their zeal to distance themselves from England, they wilfully dismissed half-a-millennium of the evolution of democracy, going back to the Magna Carta.
The two-party system is a fundamental problem. Talk about institutional memory! There can never be reform as long as it must come from one of the two dominant parties. The US today is a lot like Russia, but with one more party.
Abandoning the Westminster System for something totally new and untried has failed, and itself should be abandoned. The most stable democracies in the world are overwhelmingly parliamentary and multi-party.
Multiple parties allow new ideas to infiltrate… albeit slowly. And the parliamentary system tends to reduce the "bipolar effect" that the US suffers so deeply from: "You're either with us, or them." Floor-crossings are much more common, which holds parties accountable.
I'm not claiming these two things make for a perfect government, but they had five hundred years of evolution and fine-tuning before the arrogant Foundering Fathers decided they needed something completely new and different.
A first step would be ranked voting, which would allow a start to a thriving multi-party system. NOT "proportional representation", which specifically gives party loyalty more weight than representation.
You're Right. And You're Missing the Point.
You're absolutely right that term limits won't fix the structural problems. The two-party system. The lobbyist capture. The campaign finance nightmare. The abandonment of parliamentary traditions that actually work. All of it.
And you're right that I quoted myself,"You cannot fix a system using the people the system selected for",and then proposed term limits as a solution, which does seem to contradict the entire premise.
But here's what I'm actually saying: I don't think we can fix this.
Not through reform. Not through better rules. Not through ranked-choice voting or multi-party systems or parliamentary democracy or any of the structural changes that countries with functioning democracies have.
Because those changes require the people currently in power to vote for systems that reduce their power. They require Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell and every other lifer to say, "Yes, let's make it easier to replace us."
They won't.
The Argument for Chaos
Term limits aren't a solution. They're a controlled demolition.
You're right that lobbyists would gain even more power over rookie legislators who don't know the system. You're right that institutional memory matters. You're right that we'd get more grandstanding and less actual governance.
Good.
Because what we have now is a perfectly optimized machine for producing the appearance of democracy while ensuring nothing threatens the donor class. The institutional memory you're worried about losing is the institutional memory of how to kill reform. The expertise we'd sacrifice is expertise in preventing change.
Yes, lobbyists would have more power over term-limited legislators. But they already have all the power. What we'd lose is the veneer of legitimacy that comes from electing the same people for forty years while pretending they represent us.
I'd rather have obvious capture than disguised capture.
Why Parliamentary Systems Won't Save Us
You're absolutely right that parliamentary democracies with multiple parties are more stable and functional. The Westminster system evolved over centuries. It works better than what we have.
We're not getting it.
Not because it's a bad idea. Because the people who would have to implement it are the exact people who benefit from the current system. You think Chuck Schumer is going to champion a move to parliamentary democracy? Mitch McConnell is going to embrace ranked-choice voting that could empower third parties?
The system you're describing requires a constitutional convention or amendments that will never pass. It requires the Democratic and Republican parties to voluntarily reduce their duopoly. It requires politicians to trade their personal power for better governance.
They won't do it.
So yes, your solution is better than mine. And yes, mine won't actually fix anything. But mine is possible,barely,and yours isn't.
The Foundering Fathers
I love that typo. "Foundering Fathers." Perfect.
You're right that they threw out centuries of evolved democracy to try something new. And you're right that it's failed. The two-party system is structural. The presidential system creates the "with us or against us" dynamic you're describing. The whole design is adversarial rather than collaborative.
And it's not changing.
Not through reform from within. Because the people inside the system selected for by the system cannot dismantle the system that selected them. That's not cynicism. That's observation.
What I'm Actually Arguing For
Term limits aren't a fix. They're an acknowledgment that we can't fix this.
What I want is for the system to be so obviously broken, so transparently corrupt, so impossibly dysfunctional that people stop believing in it. Stop thinking it works. Stop defending it because they've been taught to respect institutions.
I want the chaos that comes from rookie legislators who don't know which fights are already over. Who waste time on impossible reforms. Who haven't learned to perform opposition instead of actual opposition.
Not because that will fix anything. But because the current system's greatest strength is that it looks functional. It looks like democracy. It produces the aesthetics of representation while ensuring nothing changes.
Term limits would strip that away. Would make it obvious that lobbyists run everything. Would expose that the emperor has no clothes.
And maybe,maybe,when enough people see that, they'll stop trying to reform a system that cannot be reformed and start building something new.
Ranked-Choice Voting
You're right that this should be step one. And you're right that proportional representation empowers party loyalty over actual representation.
Ranked-choice voting could break the duopoly. Could allow third parties to actually compete. Could reduce the "with us or them" binary that's killing us.
I support it completely.
I also don't think we're getting it. Not nationally. Not in my lifetime. Because the two parties that would have to pass it are the two parties it would threaten.
Some states will get it. Some cities. And that's good. But it won't scale to the federal level because the federal level is controlled by the exact people who benefit from the current system.
What This Is Really About
I'm not arguing that term limits would fix democracy. I'm arguing that democracy is already broken, and I'd rather watch it fail obviously than watch it fail slowly while pretending to work.
You're arguing for the system we should have. I'm arguing for accepting that we'll never get it from the people currently in charge.
You want ranked-choice voting, parliamentary democracy, multiple parties, and evolved systems that actually work. I want those things too.
But since we're not getting them, I'll settle for making it impossible to pretend the current system works.
The Horsetail Problem
Your metaphor is perfect. Pull on the visible growth and the ten-foot root just sends up another shoot.
So what do you do with horsetail?
You can't pull it up. The roots are too deep. You can try to dig them out, but you'll miss pieces and it'll come back. You can poison it, but that poisons everything else too.
What actually works: Stop feeding it. Stop giving it the conditions it needs to thrive. Make the environment hostile to its growth.
The political system is the same. You can't pull it up from within. You can't reform it using its own tools. You can't vote it out using the voting system it controls.
What you can do: Stop pretending it's legitimate. Stop defending it because you're supposed to respect institutions. Stop feeding it the one thing it needs to survive,your belief that it works.
Term limits don't fix the root. They just make it impossible to pretend the plant is healthy.
You're Right
Your solution is better than mine. Parliamentary democracy with ranked-choice voting and multiple parties would be better than what we have. It would be better than my chaotic term-limited nightmare.
But we're not getting your solution. The people who could give it to us won't, because they benefit from not giving it to us.
So I'll take the chaos. I'll take the obvious failure over the disguised failure. I'll take the rookie legislators who don't know what they're doing over the lifers who know exactly what they're doing and choose to do it anyway.
Not because it's a solution. Because it's acknowledgment that there isn't one.
‘Ranked voting at the local and state level, which fosters new ideas via multiple parties. At some point, the dominant paradigm gets "shaded out" from below, rather than trying to attack it from above.’
This could work, Tom.
►So what do you do with horsetail? You can't pull it up. The roots are too deep. You can try to dig them out, but you'll miss pieces and it'll come back. You can poison it, but that poisons everything else too. What actually works: Stop feeding it… Stop feeding it the one thing it needs to survive, your belief that it works.◀︎
Thanks for brilliantly completing my metaphor!
I've dealt with horsetail. I crowd it out.
Tall cover-crops will stop "feeding" it by denying it the sunlight it needs.
Perhaps that suggests a different metaphorical coping strategy. Ranked voting at the local and state level, which fosters new ideas via multiple parties. At some point, the dominant paradigm gets "shaded out" from below, rather than trying to attack it from above.
You're right.
That's why I chose Door Number Three, some 20 years ago. After Dubya was re(s)elected, I figured things couldn't get any worse! Boy, was *I* wrong!
I would not dare to say anyone with insight into the hopelessness of the situation should just leave. But it was a good choice for me. I looked at my ticking biological clock, and decided that I had to leave, or be hopelessly stuck with the dysfunction for the rest of my life.
As someone who preferred living lightly and close to the land, I saw the same statistics you see in Nebraska. Join the corporate agribiz class, or suicide. Earl Butz said, "Get big, or get out!" So, I got out.
I was able to form a co-op farm, feed many people via local markets, keep a roof overhead, and make mortgage payments, and still have $10-$20 grand left at the end of the year, doing small, artisanal farming.
The main thing that let me do that: universal healthcare.
The money I had left at the end of each year of artisanal farming would all go to the wealthcare industry in the US.
And that happened because of a thriving third-party that has never formed a national government!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas
This is impossible in the US, because a third-party Tommy Douglas is impossible in the US. The wealthcare industry has its thumb on the scale of both US parties.
It seems we're in agreement that there's no solution. I have lots of relatives and friends in the US, and wish you luck, and offer my support in any way I can.
Horsetail is one of the oldest plants on the face of the earth. Bad simile.
Tom, I agree with every word in your essay.
Question authority
I think maybe it’s time for a change.
Definitely
Sounds good
Not sure why you felt the need to highlight three of the least corrupt members of Congress. AOC, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Of course they are part of the system. They are in Congress. But they are the best part, speaking truth to power. The rest, like My Two senators, Schumer and Gillibrand are definitely corporate Democrats. Don’t know if they do insider trading but they are corrupt in their way by being subservient to their donors. But you are wrong in highlighting those three fighters.
My point in mentioning them wasn’t to equate them with corporate Democrats or to flatten all distinctions. It was to underline something more uncomfortable: that even the best actors still operate inside a system that constrains, absorbs, and disciplines dissent. Being “part of the system” doesn’t mean morally equivalent to Schumer or Gillibrand, whose subservience to donors is its own quieter form of corruption. It means being subject to the same structural pressures, rules, and limits, even when you’re fighting against them.
This is a powerful reminder that systems are engineered to protect themselves, not to serve the people. I love how you show that it’s not just rules or procedures—it’s the people the system elevates, and the incentives they internalize. The comparison between “perfected theater” and real governance hits hard, and the tension you describe between institutional memory and chaos feels so real.
I also found the personal touch—the letters you keep, the automated replies—striking. It’s a quiet act of witnessing, of accountability, that feels almost heroic in its persistence. Even if nothing changes, someone is recording it. Someone remembers. That’s a kind of resistance in itself.
We need serious political reform in this country. Not because the system is bad but because the people who have taken advantage of it resist real, actual, effective change for the betterment of the citizens. Hold Fast 🇺🇸