How to Make America Great Again

There’s this strange feeling a lot of people have right now — not just on the left or right, but everywhere. A kind of hollowing. Like democracy is slipping through our fingers, and no one really knows why. The temperature’s rising, the anger is louder, but underneath it all is something quieter, sadder. We don’t see each other anymore. We don’t know each other. We don’t belong to anything.

I’m an engineer. I like to fix things.

How do we fix this?

Is it even fixable?

Yes, it is. All we need to do is RTFM – as a friend (also an engineer) says: “Read The Fuckin’ Manual.”

The good news is the instruction manual already exists. It was written nearly two hundred years ago, by a young Frenchman who came to the United States to figure out how the hell this democracy thing actually worked.

His name was Alexis de Tocqueville, and the book he wrote — Democracy in America — might be the most important forgotten document in our political culture. He didn’t just study Congress or the Constitution. He studied us. The way we gathered. The way we joined. The way we showed up for each other.

And what he found wasn’t what you might expect.

America, in the early 1830s, was raw, messy and often unpolished. But everywhere Tocqueville went, he saw this pulsing network of voluntary association — churches, temperance groups, local newspapers, school boards, fire brigades. These weren’t elite institutions or inherited positions. They were opt-in communities. People choosing to participate. Choosing to cooperate. Choosing to show up.

Tocqueville had never seen anything like it in Europe. And here’s the key: it’s not that Europe lacked community. It had plenty. But all of it was class-based. If you were born into the merchant class, the noble class, the peasant class — that’s where you stayed. You could belong to your guild, your parish, your caste — but you didn’t rise above it. You were slotted.

America, by contrast, was fluid. You could start a newspaper one week and run for office the next. You could be a blacksmith and sit on the town council. It wasn’t perfect — not by a long shot — but the idea was radical: that a person could matter regardless of birth. That belonging was not inherited — it was earned through participation.

That’s what Tocqueville saw. That’s what he tried to carry home to France, where the first French Revolution had already failed in 1799. He wasn’t just documenting democracy — he was studying how to build it. And what he found wasn’t some grand philosophical system. It was human-scale. Local. Voluntary. The democracy of neighbors.

And I think that’s exactly what we’ve lost.

I’ve been living on a sailboat for the past six years, mostly in isolation, reading, cooking, doing puzzles and staying off the grid. But recently something cracked open in me.

I’ve been working nonstop on AI governance systems — 20 hours a day, eight weeks straight, no sleep — and it’s changed how I see people. I’m engaging more. Asking questions. Letting my curiosity lead.

Last night I had a conversation with a diesel mechanic — a guy whose fingernails are permanently stained with grease — who was fascinated by AI. We were in a restaurant. He offered to buy me dessert if I helped him set up ChatGPT 5 on his phone. I thanked him for his offer, but told him it was unnecessary. I was happy to help him.

Then a few days before, I found myself in deep conversation with a woman who was working the register at West Marine — someone I’d previously dismissed as dippy and erratic.

But that day, I actually listened to her. I heard her stream-of-consciousness ramble as something beautiful.

And she said something wild: “I think about you a lot.” I must have made an impression on her during previous visits to her store.

Her name was Hollie. She wrote down her name and number on a piece of paper and handed it to me so that I could send her a link to what I was working on.

A similar thing happened with the woman who owns the marina. She barely made eye contact with me for two years. I assumed she didn’t like me.

Then one day we happened to be at the same place at the same time. A conversation was unavoidable. Turns out she worked for Elon Musk. He was her mentor.

I didn’t realize she respects what I do. And again, I was floored. Because I hadn’t done anything, really. I’d just been present.

And here’s the moment that hit me hardest. I had to cancel a second date with a woman I’d met online because I’d met someone else — Corinne — and felt a stronger connection there.

I wasn’t sure what to do. So I asked Corinne. She said “rip the band-aid off.” But that made me feel guilty.

So I did my best to be kind. I was honest, early, respectful.

But the woman I canceled on flipped out. She sent message after message, full of guilt and anger and confusion.

I showed the texts to Corrine, who took one look and said, “What did you do to this woman?” And I said the only thing that made sense: “I made her feel seen.”

That’s what’s missing in this country. Not policy. Not party. Presence.

People are desperate to be seen. Desperate to matter. Desperate for someone to look at them without an agenda, without swiping left or right, and just say: I see you.

De Tocqueville saw that. He saw that the real engine of democracy wasn’t ideology — it was participation. It was the habit of gathering, the habit of choosing, the habit of caring.

And we’ve lost those habits. We’ve replaced them with feeds and algorithms and performative outrage. We’re not citizens anymore. We aren’t participating.

So yes — it’s no wonder people feel like democracy is falling apart. Because it is. But not in the way we think. It’s not failing in Washington. It’s failing in the spaces between us.

You want to know how to fix it?

Just read de Tocqueville. RTFM.

That’s how we Make America Great Again.