Shut Up and Listen
June 18, 2025
POWERLESS
June 21, 2025
Oh Wait. We Can’t.
Because Your Democracy Isn’t Built to Serve You.
I think it’s clear by now. Most of us have realized the USA made a mistake. You’ve seen the corruption, the incompetence, the cruelty. You’ve watched a leader turn democracy into performance art, lies into policy, and power into a personal brand. And now you’re wondering: Can’t we just vote again?
The answer, in one bitter word: No.
Not because the people don’t want it. Not because it wouldn’t make sense. Not because there isn’t precedent elsewhere in the world. No, the reason we can’t redo an election is far more damning: The American system was never designed to serve the will of the people. It was designed to control it.
A System Frozen in 1789
While countries like Australia, the UK, and Canada can dissolve their governments and hold new elections when trust collapses, the U.S. system remains frozen in amber. We run elections on a rigid four-year clock, regardless of whether the leader we chose is corrupt, dangerous, or entirely incapable of governing.
There is no recall vote.
No snap election.
No mechanism for public re-evaluation.
We are expected to suffer; silently and even obediently until the next scheduled opportunity for change. That is not flexibility. That is tyranny by calendar.
Constitutional Cage Match
People like to talk about how brilliant the Founders were, as if they descended from heaven clutching divine blueprints. This is an obtuse, damning consequence of our national obsession with religion. But what they actually built was a system obsessed with protecting the powerful from the governed. The Constitution makes it virtually impossible to correct a national mistake:
- Impeachment? Politically rigged. Requires two-thirds of the Senate; something nearly impossible unless the president shoots someone live on television, and even then, it’s debatable.
- 25th Amendment? Meant for strokes and comas, not corruption and cowardice.
- Resignation? Narcissists don’t resign. They double down. Create chaos and distraction. You’re seeing it play out in real time now.
- A Constitutional Amendment to allow new elections? Good luck convincing two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states to vote against their own power.
There is no failsafe for national regret in the American system. The trapdoor only opens if the people above you choose to pull the lever. And they won’t.
The Illusion of Control
We are told we live in a democracy. We are told our vote is our voice. But what happens when that vote was manipulated? When media was flooded with disinformation? When foreign interference and gerrymandering and voter suppression tilted the board? When voting machines are rigged?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Because the system doesn’t care why you voted. It only cares that you did, and once the result is tallied, your voice is locked in a box for four long years. You don’t get to change your mind. You don’t get to hold power accountable. You get to wait, watch, and pray the damage isn’t irreversible.
This isn’t democracy. It’s democratic theater; a performance that masks your actual powerlessness.
Other Nations Adapt. We Cling to the Myth.
Other democratic nations acknowledge mistakes and act on them. Leaders are removed. Governments dissolved. Votes recalibrated. In those systems, the people remain sovereign. In ours, the system is sovereign, and the people are told to sit down and shut up.
We pride ourselves on being “the greatest democracy on earth,” while operating under rules that would make a medieval monarch nod in approval.
America Needs a Constitutional Reckoning
We don’t need tweaks. We need transformation.
We need a system that acknowledges the reality of modern disinformation, minority rule, and presidential overreach. A system that allows the people to course-correct, not just in theory, but in law. Because right now, if the house is burning down, all we’re allowed to do is stare at the flames and wait for Election Day.
And by then, there may be nothing left to save.
So no, we can’t just vote again. Because we never built a democracy that trusted its people enough to admit when it got things wrong. That’s not a flaw in the system. It is the system.
And until we change that, the only choice left to the people is to endure or to revolt.
Not with violence. Not with guns. But with something far more radical in a nation addicted to obedience: demanding a new blueprint.
We must stop worshipping parchment like it’s divine scripture. The Constitution is not holy writ: it’s a 236-year-old legal document written by wealthy men terrified of popular rule. It was a starting point, not a finish line. And yet we treat it like the final word, even as it fails again and again to serve a modern, diverse, informed, and rightfully angry public.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about one bad president….even though he is. Just terrible. The worst. It’s about a political structure that allows bad presidents to thrive; to lie without consequence, to break laws with impunity, to manipulate millions through fear, tribalism, and spectacle. It’s about a system that offers no emergency exits, no recourse for remorse, no power to the people once the curtain falls on election night.
That’s not democracy. That’s rule by inertia.
And inertia, left unchecked, becomes authoritarianism with a smile.
So yes, we need a new election.
Not just of leaders, but of principles.
Of accountability over tradition.
Of people over process.
Of a democracy that belongs to us, not the ghosts of 1789.
Because the truth is this: If your system cannot adapt when it is wrong, then it is not a system worth saving. And if your leaders cannot be removed when they betray you, then they are not leaders, they are rulers.
And America was not meant to be a kingdom.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.
