"Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill, 1947.

I have always liked that quote about democracy, as it both acknowledges the genius of our political system and the imperfections of it.

The structure of the current world order, the stability of the expansive increases in global democracies across the world, as spread by the West, and much of our understanding of what it is to be a part of a free society rests on our conception of democracy as the best way humans have thus far devised to managed masses of people to live together and among one another. The issue however, at least in the way that democracy has been handed down to our society, is that the linchpins of it are fairly un-democractic in nature. If we think of democracy in a more transhumanist lightthat the ability of individuals to take rational control over, and have say in, the forces that impact their lives and that ability being critical to our social and political developmentthen the version that we are propagating seems a poor representation.

The concept that might makes right and the notion that an individual (through whatever merit or opportunity the system provides that individual) may accumulate wealth to the detriment of others within the same system are strong foundational undercurrents of our society; our foreign policies, environmental policies, immigration policies, military focused economy, and pretty much the entire framework of our codified laws, as interpreted, represent these undercurrents. That strength is earned/granted/passed down, that strength must be preserved and that strength proves ones superiority to others have guided the implementation of democracy in our republic and its spread.

Now, no one can deny that this has worked out pretty well for the United States, as we have for so long been the strongest. In bygone eras of genuinely required self-reliance and/or real existential threats of conquer, these undercurrents to our system have served to the great advantage of ourselves and our allies. However, the current chaos we are all witnessing in our political system is rooted, in part, in our inability to respond and make alterations to our foundational creed.that we are the strongest, and therefore the best, and therefore get to do whatever we want, even to the detriment of others in the global system.

Technology has paced itself beyond the nation-state system; the sizes of our populations, the power of modern weapons, the inter-reliance of our financial systems, of our agricultural systems, the inter-connectivity of global citizens, the ease of information access for allrequires complex governing structures where all members of the global system have a say. Technology and globalization have radically altered our planet and every citizen and creature living within it.

There is no going back, at least not in a way that is good for anyone but the absolute elites of the global system...who have the power and means to shield themselves from a catastrophic collapse. What President Trump and other populist uprisings represent are scared populations attempting to stay king of a hill that is no longer strategically viable. Globalism has, for better or worse, altered the ability of any individual nation state to fully have charge over all of its resourcesor allow stronger states to suppress others and exploit their resources for themselveswe are all, as a global system in this together now. We, as a global community, should be mapping out ways to sustainably harvest the ocean for everyone, limiting the impacts of climate change, learning to reduce each individuals environmental impact while increasing their quality of life, exploring how technology can better educate our youth, rebuilding areas and populations devastated by war, exploring space, etc not building walls, gutting humanities education, threatening other nations and/or banning people from entry and participation in the system.

Making American great again in this era of globalism does not mean we focus on our interests alone and pursue them at the expense of otherssimply because we think we have the military and economic power to do somaking American great again in a global system means we have to reinvent ourselves in ways that take into account our dependence on everyone else and their dependence on usand it is hard, and will take time. But reinvention of, and bettering, ourselves requires first the acknowledgement that our current implementation of democracy needs adjustment. To reject that as a reality has risks with unfathomable consequencesand what exactly are we willing to risk in the process of doing so? Our conversion to the shallow state ? A renewed Cold War with Russia or China? The suppression of other populations? The disruption of our global economy? Global authoritarianism? Total war? What exactly?

If our democratic system is going to be handed down to future generations, and continue its spread to other parts of the worldwe need to start thinking of democracy in much more humanistic termsand be done with those undercurrents driven by power and indulgence we are vainly trying to cling to. For democracy to be the best way for humans to amass together and prosper, we should look more toward where our founders looked when our nation was formed.the tribal councils of Native Americans and their Great Law of Peace . Each nation of this union had a role in the conduct of government, they shared common narratives, celebrated common events, and had a concern of system welfare that superseded self-interest. Our role should be to become the standard bearer of progressive unity, not teaching the world lessons in sub-optimization for the individual at every level imaginable. Our system survival depends on our recognition that we need others to survive and that they need usunless we are willing to accept thatwe will never have true prosperity or meaningful, lasting peace.