Brilliantly illustrated. I'm new to civics and your metaphor helps me better understand how congress works. I've been contacting my reps every week but I hadn't yet given much thought to the "wiring" behind the switches. This actually motivates me to look further into it, which is what good writing is all about.
We want a functional government for America. Thank you for your continued efforts to identify the failure and voice for a structural design plan. Our voices collectively can send a message to our leaders for a better government outcome.
I support the one message to our elected officials. “We want a functional government. Not structural failure”
You've put your finger on exactly the right thing: collective voice matters, and the message has to be clear enough that it can't be ignored or misread. I'd push the framing just slightly — from "not structural failure" to "professional governance design." Not just against something, but for something specific. The more people who can name what they want, the harder it is for leaders to dismiss it as vague frustration.
That's the work. And it's a lot easier with people like you in the conversation.
You're right—the people inside the system benefit from the wiring. They're not going to change it themselves.
So here's the plan:
Step 1: Get enough people to see the hole. That's what this essay is. Most people are stuck in the hero/villain trap. They do their civic duty every couple years, vote, nothing changes, and they disengage. They don't see the wiring—so they keep blaming the switches.
Step 2: Build outside pressure. Not outrage. Not ranting about villains. A simple, repeated message: "This is a structural failure. We want a functional government."
Every government shutdown. Every healthcare denial. Every policy whiplash. Instead of perpetuating the outrage cycle, redirect it: "This is a structural failure. The wiring needs to change."
Step 3: Once enough voices are saying it, changes become possible. Not before.
Here's the hard part: this is an active solution, not a passive one. We want to just elect someone to fix it for us. That's passive. But the people who benefit from the system aren't going to change it. So it's on us to tell our elected officials—over and over—that the wiring needs to change.
I've been doing it for months. There's only so much one person can do. I can do the design work. But I alone can't make them listen, I'm just one voice.
That's where you come in. Everyone reading this. One message, repeated: "We want a functional government."
Let me restate this another way: the current blame game, winner-take-all legislative process is unsustainable. If you look at the pattern, it results in full or partial government shutdowns that have become closer and closer together until the present. This whiplash process is broken. In the present trajectory, the process will stop completely at some point and we will have no legislative branch. We have choices: do nothing but wring our hands; or, start beating the drum for real change.
You see the same pattern I'm seeing. This is how democracies fall—or at least this one. The legislature gets more and more dysfunctional. Executive power grows to fill the vacuum. I've talked to many people who voted for Trump. Even the ones who don't like what he's doing defend it with: "At least he's doing something."
The frustrating thing is how everyone is letting Trump run the game. When there's a controversy—DOGE, Venezuela, ICE, Iran—people get sucked into it. Then he starts another. It's a firehose, designed to overwhelm and exhaust. Trump has been playing the media since his first term. They can't resist—it's too tempting, too lucrative.
I see Christopher Armitage and everyone at the No Kings rallies fighting so hard. I respect that fight. But here's the thing: with Trump, there is always going to be another controversy, another crisis, another blatant abuse of power. Trump can win simply by exhausting everyone.
Meanwhile, the structural things—like the reinstatement of Schedule F (the "Loyalty Purge")—get little to no attention.
I don't want to sell this as easy, by any stretch. This is an extremely difficult challenge. A monumental undertaking. As J C above, you, and Christopher Armitage have recognized, the reform isn't going to come from within. It (the passive solution) would require getting enough people across the U.S. to elect enough representatives (superhuman angels, heroes, and saints) willing to resist all the pressures and incentives they'll face—resist their own self-interest—to make these changes. And most importantly it would require dislodging the most powerful and influential party leaders so the junior representatives could do it.
I think it's more viable to build a coalition that puts external pressure on Congress. It's not going to be easy, but it's comparatively doable. I've had productive conversations with Democrats, Republicans, and MAGA supporters by focusing on the structure, on the undeniable problems, the things we can all agree on. The shutdowns, the wars, the dysfunction—these hurt every single person in this country. The structural lens bridges the divide and creates unity.
But to do this, we have to fight human nature. This morning Save America Movement posted "Keep Knocking Down Villains." They're unknowingly playing into Trump's hands. And I'm sure you can now understand why Chris Armitage's Soft Secession movement, all his rhetoric about keep fighting, breaks my heart. He's fighting hard, which I respect very much, but it's on the wrong battlefield. He's playing Trump's game on Trump's terms.
So what's the alternative?
Stop playing Trump's game entirely. Stop reacting to each controversy. Stop chasing villains.
Instead, one message, repeated: "We The People want a functional government."
Every shutdown. Every abuse of power. Every executive overreach. Don't engage with the content of the controversy—point at the wiring that enabled it.
That's not as satisfying as righteous outrage. It doesn't get the dopamine hit of villain-slaying. But it's the only thing that changes the game instead of playing it.
Trump wins by exhaustion. The structural lens wins by redirection. Every time we point at the wiring instead of the latest outrage, we're building toward something that outlasts him.
This article underestimates the importance of electing the right people in November. Sure, the structure will still be broken; but, under Democratic leadership, at least the system would block the idiotic things the Republicans are doing, do the deliberate, outright destruction of the government would stop.
Beyond that, the system will be highly resistant to change, because those in power decide what to change, and they will want to keep things as they are.
You're looking at it as: if the Dems are in charge, the atrocities will stop.
But the problem that allows the atrocities to happen is still there. Waiting for the next time voters get fed up with the Dems and hand power to the other side.
This is a pattern that has played out for decades. The pendulum swings. Each side undoes what the other built. Nobody fixes the clock.
And you're right that those in power will resist structural change—that's exactly the point. Reform won't come from inside. It never does. It comes from enough people outside the system demanding it so loudly and consistently that politicians can't ignore it.
That's what we're building here.
The goal isn't to pick the right team to operate a broken machine. It's to fix the machine so it stops producing these outcomes regardless of who's operating it.
Your vote in November still matters. But it's not enough. It's never been enough. And until we're honest about that, the pendulum keeps swinging—and the atrocities keep coming, just from a different direction.
Yeah; there is so much great stuff on Substack that It can take me a while to circle back! Your project is certainly interesting.
You may understand what I said, but certainly do not understand what I meant to say! The Dems certainly have their follies. One could argue that, in trying to force their values on a nation that was not uniformly interested in them, they pushed too many voters to the right. Even so, they have not murdered law abiding protesters in cold blood (or even law breaking ones who did not deserve to die!), sent their president's personal masked Gestapo into public spaces for the purpose of terrifying the public into submission, tried to change the United States from a society driven by ideals into a petty one of blood and soil, alienated and tariffed all of our allies, gutted important environmental laws, thrown the entire world's economy into a tailspin with a meat-headed attack on Iran, switched sides against Ukraine to join with Putin in threatening Europe, or arbitrarily tried to codify their personal religious beliefs into a uniform code of law; heck, they haven't even angered their opposition by lying about some of our neighbors eating their neighbor's cat’s!
There is no question that just replacing a Trumpist government with one of Democrats in Congress blocking Trump would be an instant improvement to our world. After that, we would, as you say, have lots to do to fix the system and maintain some semblance of sanity, but just stopping the political axe murders would be genuine progress. Not a comprehensive or lasting fix, but a sudden end to Trump's worst excesses.
And you're right—a Democratic Congress blocking Trump's worst excesses would be an immediate improvement. I won't pretend otherwise.
But I see two problems with resting our hopes there.
First, voters are still overwhelmingly focused on candidates—who's good, who's evil, who will save us. That's the trap Same Gravity is trying to name. As long as that's the dominant frame, we're playing switch-swapping, not fixing the wiring.
Second, a Democratic majority in 2027 is anything but guaranteed (think last week's SCOTUS ruling). The structural forces that shape electoral outcomes—redistricting, voter access, the mechanics of who actually shows up—those are themselves wiring problems. The machine shapes elections too, not just legislation.
And here's the thing: you already named the third problem yourself. Even if both of those resolve—even if voters wake up AND Democrats take Congress—you called it "not a comprehensive or lasting fix." The pendulum swings back. It always has.
And here's what worries me most: if Democrats take Congress in 2027 and the worst of Trump's excesses slow down, people will exhale. They'll feel like the crisis is over. They'll go back to their lives.
That exhale is the trap.
Because the wiring that allowed all of it is still there. Waiting. And now, to keep the machine from being weaponized again, citizens have to maintain constant vigilance—fully engaged, every election cycle, every primary, every news cycle—to make sure only trusted, good people are operating the controls.
Forever.
That's not democracy. That's an exhausting, fragile, unwinnable strategy. You can't ask 330 million people to stay at DEFCON 1 indefinitely. People have jobs, families, lives. Vigilance fatigue is real—and the organized interests who benefit from the broken system never get tired, they have every incentive to keep pushing.
The machine that produced this moment will still be running. Quietly. Waiting for the next operator.
So yes—fight for the immediate improvement. Vote for it. I am.
But don't let the relief become complacency. Because the only way to stop needing constant vigilance is to fix the machine so it doesn't require a hero at the controls in the first place.
I am reminded of the end of the movie, "Casablanca," where Rick and the Vichy officer walk off as Rick says, "It looks like this is the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship." The Nazis want Rick dead anyway, and they would kill the Vichy officer if they learned how he had allowed the former spy to escape, putting ethics above rules.
You and I actually agree 100%. You focus on the wiring. I focus (albeit not, yet, with a Substack column of my own) on how to get those in charge to be willing to change the wiring; or, if necessary (which it clearly would be), to change the culture so that it wants the wiring changed, even as it fights the change. I see an absurdist, impossible pantomime of a dilemma that somehow must be resolved. Certainly would be nice to know how the wiring ought to work if we ever succeed in changing it!
And you're right that there are members willing to change the wiring—In my recent article "The Machine Runs On Failure" I briefly talk about David Jolly. He didn't just talk about reform, he drafted legislation and went on 60 Minutes to name the problem publicly. The party marginalized him, withdrew support, and funded his replacement. He lost reelection.
But here's the part that makes me sad: the constituents let it happen. They voted for the other guy.
That's the missing piece. Members who try to fix the system need constituent support loud enough that the party can't afford to punish them. Jolly needed voters to say "we saw what you tried to do, and we're sending you back." They didn't.
That's what I mean by constituent pressure. Not just voting, not just contacting your rep, but specifically, visibly supporting the members who attempt structural reform, and making clear that punishing them has a cost.
Right now, organized interests coordinate that kind of pressure effortlessly. Citizens don't. Until they do, the machine keeps eating the reformers.
Honestly, the "absurdist, impossible pantomime of a dilemma that somehow must be resolved" is exactly what I have been reckoning with for the last 6+ months. That's how The Statecraft Blueprint was born. TSB is my attempt at creating that culture. But it's hard.
I read, "The Machine Runs On Failure," and regret to report how correct it sounded. Wouldn't you rather be wrong on that?! But, you're not!
This especially struck me: "But here's the part that makes me sad: the constituents let it happen. They voted for the other guy." Exactly my sentiments! I have been impossibly sad about the course of American politics, the "superpower suicide" in which we find ourselves. Trump is not the problem. Trumpism is not the problem. The problem is the too many voters who voted for Trump and Trumpism. Voters who can not see past the next promise to kill abortion rights, enshrine disrespect for women, sell more coal and oil, and supposedly enrich the already rich so that, in the infinite, God-given wisdom that launched them into their status, they will be able to sit atop an economy with a "rising tide that lifts all boats," even as the once-large middle-class that used to be our country's strength becomes too weak to power further economic success.
I don't doubt that you and others can invent systems that would fix the wiring. The problem will be that there will always be some greedy, self-righteous fool who will find a way to circumvent even better systems. There will never be a way to separate fair play from running the system. I'm not saying you should not strive to improve the system. Making it harder to warp could only help. It's just that you show me a Jason Edwards, and I'll show you a Newt Gingrich or a roomful of Republican senators and representatives who are too scared of Trump to even think of working against him. There is no hope without making the voters understand their world better and demand better of their government.
Brilliantly illustrated. I'm new to civics and your metaphor helps me better understand how congress works. I've been contacting my reps every week but I hadn't yet given much thought to the "wiring" behind the switches. This actually motivates me to look further into it, which is what good writing is all about.
We want a functional government for America. Thank you for your continued efforts to identify the failure and voice for a structural design plan. Our voices collectively can send a message to our leaders for a better government outcome.
I support the one message to our elected officials. “We want a functional government. Not structural failure”
Jan, thank you — this genuinely means a lot.
You've put your finger on exactly the right thing: collective voice matters, and the message has to be clear enough that it can't be ignored or misread. I'd push the framing just slightly — from "not structural failure" to "professional governance design." Not just against something, but for something specific. The more people who can name what they want, the harder it is for leaders to dismiss it as vague frustration.
That's the work. And it's a lot easier with people like you in the conversation.
It's a total Catch 22. The people responsible don't want change.
You're right—the people inside the system benefit from the wiring. They're not going to change it themselves.
So here's the plan:
Step 1: Get enough people to see the hole. That's what this essay is. Most people are stuck in the hero/villain trap. They do their civic duty every couple years, vote, nothing changes, and they disengage. They don't see the wiring—so they keep blaming the switches.
Step 2: Build outside pressure. Not outrage. Not ranting about villains. A simple, repeated message: "This is a structural failure. We want a functional government."
Every government shutdown. Every healthcare denial. Every policy whiplash. Instead of perpetuating the outrage cycle, redirect it: "This is a structural failure. The wiring needs to change."
Step 3: Once enough voices are saying it, changes become possible. Not before.
Here's the hard part: this is an active solution, not a passive one. We want to just elect someone to fix it for us. That's passive. But the people who benefit from the system aren't going to change it. So it's on us to tell our elected officials—over and over—that the wiring needs to change.
I've been doing it for months. There's only so much one person can do. I can do the design work. But I alone can't make them listen, I'm just one voice.
That's where you come in. Everyone reading this. One message, repeated: "We want a functional government."
Let me restate this another way: the current blame game, winner-take-all legislative process is unsustainable. If you look at the pattern, it results in full or partial government shutdowns that have become closer and closer together until the present. This whiplash process is broken. In the present trajectory, the process will stop completely at some point and we will have no legislative branch. We have choices: do nothing but wring our hands; or, start beating the drum for real change.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
You see the same pattern I'm seeing. This is how democracies fall—or at least this one. The legislature gets more and more dysfunctional. Executive power grows to fill the vacuum. I've talked to many people who voted for Trump. Even the ones who don't like what he's doing defend it with: "At least he's doing something."
The frustrating thing is how everyone is letting Trump run the game. When there's a controversy—DOGE, Venezuela, ICE, Iran—people get sucked into it. Then he starts another. It's a firehose, designed to overwhelm and exhaust. Trump has been playing the media since his first term. They can't resist—it's too tempting, too lucrative.
I see Christopher Armitage and everyone at the No Kings rallies fighting so hard. I respect that fight. But here's the thing: with Trump, there is always going to be another controversy, another crisis, another blatant abuse of power. Trump can win simply by exhausting everyone.
Meanwhile, the structural things—like the reinstatement of Schedule F (the "Loyalty Purge")—get little to no attention.
I don't want to sell this as easy, by any stretch. This is an extremely difficult challenge. A monumental undertaking. As J C above, you, and Christopher Armitage have recognized, the reform isn't going to come from within. It (the passive solution) would require getting enough people across the U.S. to elect enough representatives (superhuman angels, heroes, and saints) willing to resist all the pressures and incentives they'll face—resist their own self-interest—to make these changes. And most importantly it would require dislodging the most powerful and influential party leaders so the junior representatives could do it.
I think it's more viable to build a coalition that puts external pressure on Congress. It's not going to be easy, but it's comparatively doable. I've had productive conversations with Democrats, Republicans, and MAGA supporters by focusing on the structure, on the undeniable problems, the things we can all agree on. The shutdowns, the wars, the dysfunction—these hurt every single person in this country. The structural lens bridges the divide and creates unity.
But to do this, we have to fight human nature. This morning Save America Movement posted "Keep Knocking Down Villains." They're unknowingly playing into Trump's hands. And I'm sure you can now understand why Chris Armitage's Soft Secession movement, all his rhetoric about keep fighting, breaks my heart. He's fighting hard, which I respect very much, but it's on the wrong battlefield. He's playing Trump's game on Trump's terms.
So what's the alternative?
Stop playing Trump's game entirely. Stop reacting to each controversy. Stop chasing villains.
Instead, one message, repeated: "We The People want a functional government."
Every shutdown. Every abuse of power. Every executive overreach. Don't engage with the content of the controversy—point at the wiring that enabled it.
That's not as satisfying as righteous outrage. It doesn't get the dopamine hit of villain-slaying. But it's the only thing that changes the game instead of playing it.
Trump wins by exhaustion. The structural lens wins by redirection. Every time we point at the wiring instead of the latest outrage, we're building toward something that outlasts him.
I think your assessment here is correct.
This article underestimates the importance of electing the right people in November. Sure, the structure will still be broken; but, under Democratic leadership, at least the system would block the idiotic things the Republicans are doing, do the deliberate, outright destruction of the government would stop.
Beyond that, the system will be highly resistant to change, because those in power decide what to change, and they will want to keep things as they are.
Hey! Good to hear from you @Skian Dew! It’s been a minute!
I get it. You want to stop the atrocities and crises that flood traditional and social media every day.
But you're falling into a trap. I wrote about it in ‘When Everyone Admits The System Is Broken But Fights To Keep It Anyway’ (https://statecraftblueprint.org/p/when-everyone-admits-the-system-is
You're looking at it as: if the Dems are in charge, the atrocities will stop.
But the problem that allows the atrocities to happen is still there. Waiting for the next time voters get fed up with the Dems and hand power to the other side.
This is a pattern that has played out for decades. The pendulum swings. Each side undoes what the other built. Nobody fixes the clock.
And you're right that those in power will resist structural change—that's exactly the point. Reform won't come from inside. It never does. It comes from enough people outside the system demanding it so loudly and consistently that politicians can't ignore it.
That's what we're building here.
The goal isn't to pick the right team to operate a broken machine. It's to fix the machine so it stops producing these outcomes regardless of who's operating it.
Your vote in November still matters. But it's not enough. It's never been enough. And until we're honest about that, the pendulum keeps swinging—and the atrocities keep coming, just from a different direction.
Yeah; there is so much great stuff on Substack that It can take me a while to circle back! Your project is certainly interesting.
You may understand what I said, but certainly do not understand what I meant to say! The Dems certainly have their follies. One could argue that, in trying to force their values on a nation that was not uniformly interested in them, they pushed too many voters to the right. Even so, they have not murdered law abiding protesters in cold blood (or even law breaking ones who did not deserve to die!), sent their president's personal masked Gestapo into public spaces for the purpose of terrifying the public into submission, tried to change the United States from a society driven by ideals into a petty one of blood and soil, alienated and tariffed all of our allies, gutted important environmental laws, thrown the entire world's economy into a tailspin with a meat-headed attack on Iran, switched sides against Ukraine to join with Putin in threatening Europe, or arbitrarily tried to codify their personal religious beliefs into a uniform code of law; heck, they haven't even angered their opposition by lying about some of our neighbors eating their neighbor's cat’s!
There is no question that just replacing a Trumpist government with one of Democrats in Congress blocking Trump would be an instant improvement to our world. After that, we would, as you say, have lots to do to fix the system and maintain some semblance of sanity, but just stopping the political axe murders would be genuine progress. Not a comprehensive or lasting fix, but a sudden end to Trump's worst excesses.
I feel every one of those points. Every. Day.
And you're right—a Democratic Congress blocking Trump's worst excesses would be an immediate improvement. I won't pretend otherwise.
But I see two problems with resting our hopes there.
First, voters are still overwhelmingly focused on candidates—who's good, who's evil, who will save us. That's the trap Same Gravity is trying to name. As long as that's the dominant frame, we're playing switch-swapping, not fixing the wiring.
Second, a Democratic majority in 2027 is anything but guaranteed (think last week's SCOTUS ruling). The structural forces that shape electoral outcomes—redistricting, voter access, the mechanics of who actually shows up—those are themselves wiring problems. The machine shapes elections too, not just legislation.
And here's the thing: you already named the third problem yourself. Even if both of those resolve—even if voters wake up AND Democrats take Congress—you called it "not a comprehensive or lasting fix." The pendulum swings back. It always has.
And here's what worries me most: if Democrats take Congress in 2027 and the worst of Trump's excesses slow down, people will exhale. They'll feel like the crisis is over. They'll go back to their lives.
That exhale is the trap.
Because the wiring that allowed all of it is still there. Waiting. And now, to keep the machine from being weaponized again, citizens have to maintain constant vigilance—fully engaged, every election cycle, every primary, every news cycle—to make sure only trusted, good people are operating the controls.
Forever.
That's not democracy. That's an exhausting, fragile, unwinnable strategy. You can't ask 330 million people to stay at DEFCON 1 indefinitely. People have jobs, families, lives. Vigilance fatigue is real—and the organized interests who benefit from the broken system never get tired, they have every incentive to keep pushing.
The machine that produced this moment will still be running. Quietly. Waiting for the next operator.
So yes—fight for the immediate improvement. Vote for it. I am.
But don't let the relief become complacency. Because the only way to stop needing constant vigilance is to fix the machine so it doesn't require a hero at the controls in the first place.
I wrote about this at length here: https://statecraftblueprint.org/p/democracy-shouldnt-require-heroic
The goal isn't to find better operators. It's to build a machine that doesn't depend on them.
I am reminded of the end of the movie, "Casablanca," where Rick and the Vichy officer walk off as Rick says, "It looks like this is the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship." The Nazis want Rick dead anyway, and they would kill the Vichy officer if they learned how he had allowed the former spy to escape, putting ethics above rules.
You and I actually agree 100%. You focus on the wiring. I focus (albeit not, yet, with a Substack column of my own) on how to get those in charge to be willing to change the wiring; or, if necessary (which it clearly would be), to change the culture so that it wants the wiring changed, even as it fights the change. I see an absurdist, impossible pantomime of a dilemma that somehow must be resolved. Certainly would be nice to know how the wiring ought to work if we ever succeed in changing it!
I love how you framed that!
And you're right that there are members willing to change the wiring—In my recent article "The Machine Runs On Failure" I briefly talk about David Jolly. He didn't just talk about reform, he drafted legislation and went on 60 Minutes to name the problem publicly. The party marginalized him, withdrew support, and funded his replacement. He lost reelection.
But here's the part that makes me sad: the constituents let it happen. They voted for the other guy.
That's the missing piece. Members who try to fix the system need constituent support loud enough that the party can't afford to punish them. Jolly needed voters to say "we saw what you tried to do, and we're sending you back." They didn't.
That's what I mean by constituent pressure. Not just voting, not just contacting your rep, but specifically, visibly supporting the members who attempt structural reform, and making clear that punishing them has a cost.
Right now, organized interests coordinate that kind of pressure effortlessly. Citizens don't. Until they do, the machine keeps eating the reformers.
Honestly, the "absurdist, impossible pantomime of a dilemma that somehow must be resolved" is exactly what I have been reckoning with for the last 6+ months. That's how The Statecraft Blueprint was born. TSB is my attempt at creating that culture. But it's hard.
I read, "The Machine Runs On Failure," and regret to report how correct it sounded. Wouldn't you rather be wrong on that?! But, you're not!
This especially struck me: "But here's the part that makes me sad: the constituents let it happen. They voted for the other guy." Exactly my sentiments! I have been impossibly sad about the course of American politics, the "superpower suicide" in which we find ourselves. Trump is not the problem. Trumpism is not the problem. The problem is the too many voters who voted for Trump and Trumpism. Voters who can not see past the next promise to kill abortion rights, enshrine disrespect for women, sell more coal and oil, and supposedly enrich the already rich so that, in the infinite, God-given wisdom that launched them into their status, they will be able to sit atop an economy with a "rising tide that lifts all boats," even as the once-large middle-class that used to be our country's strength becomes too weak to power further economic success.
I don't doubt that you and others can invent systems that would fix the wiring. The problem will be that there will always be some greedy, self-righteous fool who will find a way to circumvent even better systems. There will never be a way to separate fair play from running the system. I'm not saying you should not strive to improve the system. Making it harder to warp could only help. It's just that you show me a Jason Edwards, and I'll show you a Newt Gingrich or a roomful of Republican senators and representatives who are too scared of Trump to even think of working against him. There is no hope without making the voters understand their world better and demand better of their government.
Keep at it. Your work could only help.