America 2.0: Checks, balances, and failing with flair

Checks and balances were once designed for a world where people actually checked and occasionally even balanced. Imagine that. A system designed to assume the governors and the governed would wrestle with reality, uncertainty, and perhaps even that mysterious thing called “truth.” The expectation was that, when push came to shove, reasonable human beings would reliably show up and behave reasonably.

Of course, it also assumed “being reasonable” meant practicing virtues like humility, curiosity, and the courage to face the unknown—qualities now regarded as quaint hobbies, alongside churning butter and competitive yodeling.

Back in its heyday when people were rattling around in horse-drawn carriages, it was generally a common worldview that God was real, you shouldn’t kill your neighbor’s cow, and if half your children died of dysentery, well, at least you had a spare six.

But now it’s generally shared that sitting in your own thoughts is not a whole lot of fun. Not when you can swap virtue for this glorious thing called validation. Why wrestle with the unknown when you can binge-watch, shout slogans, and protect your ego from the slightest discomfort? No longer do we need that overrated thing called discernment. We just need parties that pat us on the head like the good children we are, chanting sweet lullabies while we nap through democracy, blissfully avoiding the horrors of being wrong, or heaven forbid, sharing the floor with someone who isn’t Kosher.

Meanwhile the system rewards our new highest virtue which means this ingenious safeguard against tyranny now functions like Jack Skellington insisting that his version of Christmas will be brilliant.

Behold! The brilliance of today’s social justice influencer.

Sure, we check each other endlessly. Call-out culture? Thriving. But actual balance? Don’t be ridiculous. We clearly have lost the art amid the endless stalling, posturing, and moral theater. The last time anyone in government achieved balance was when a senator slipped on a marble floor and managed to not spill his espresso martini. He was awarded a Purple Heart and 50 points for Gryffindor, but later lost it all when he complimented the other party’s shoes.

I applaud the attempt and optimism for what our founders thought we would become 250 years later. The system isn’t broken because the architecture is bad. No, the architecture is perfectly fine. It’s just that we’re a bunch of nincompoops who can’t be trusted in public to care for anyone unless they resemble cardboard cut-outs of ourselves.

But fear not, dear citizens! The end is not nigh. A brighter, slightly less absurd future still awaits. Assuming we don’t die of secondhand embarrassment first.

Change the incentives and change the game

I get it. I hate politics too. It’s all terribly boring like the IRS serenading you with tax collection notices. The rituals, the ceremonies, the pomp. It’s all stale. A few years ago the great minds decided, “We must get the young people involved!” and promptly hurled buckets of branded content onto Instagram. Because, as everyone knows, nothing says “timeless civic virtue” like a pastel infographic about a highly complex geopolitical war in a $1,200 typeface, perfectly kerned, and sandwiched between photos of a summer flex captioned “Life lately.”

Stripped of genuine virtues, the exercise quickly degenerates into people congratulating themselves on their superior morality—like Halloween Town smugly insisting it could do Christmas better than Santa.

This is discourse today. Everyone struts about convinced they’re being frightfully moral, but it all has the air of Wednesday Addams teaching Sunday School. And as someone whose natural resting state is “playing in uncertainty,” I assure you, I can spot a fake faster than you can say “influencer partnership.”

Of course, I’m not suggesting we suddenly make spiritual literacy a mandatory school subject, though we probably should. Successful corporations, non-profits, and startups all function in surprisingly similar ways, even when the decision-making helm is manned by questionable characters. And government, naturally, is headed in exactly the same direction.

Right now, discourse is chaotic. Like Halloween Town trying desperately to look like the most righteous, competent, or clever Christmas planners. Jack Skellington, in a poorly fitted Santa suit, makes all the decisions because he’s frightfully good at scaring people, which in this context, is considered the highest virtue.

He kidnaps Santa, holds him hostage, encourages loyalty from his favorite trick-or-treaters, and executes moral gymnastics so convoluted even Oogie Boogie would blush. Classic waterfall maneuver. And the government is no different. Rigid, ceremonial, and blissfully oblivious to the chaos below. Policies plop down into people’s laps nobody asked for, and anyone daring to question them is either swept aside or ignored, much like poor Sally with a hunch. Citizens, caught in the storm, react predictably by seeking validation or waving virtue-signaling banners with the enthusiasm of Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Everyone is performing in this grotesque theater of self-interest, utterly convinced that looking good is the same as being good.

Now, imagine if we were nudged toward agility. If the branches of power and the populace itself became like empowered, cross-functional product teams, rewarded for measurable, tangible improvements rather than appearances. Suddenly, the waterfall of petty theatrics turns into a series of dynamic feedback loops, where mistakes are corrected quickly, learning is prized, and the real kind of virtue begins to emerge organically. Balance, once a distant aspiration, becomes not only achievable but inevitable, because the incentives now favor doing good rather than looking good.

Gone will be the heroic myths of “I am on the right side of history!” Instead, the narrative shifts from us vs them to success stories about policies, the lives improved, and outcomes that are measurable, precise, and undeniable. Abstract image management is swept away like Jack tumbling out of the sky, utterly incapable of competing with the glorious, chaotic reality of what actually happened on the ground.

Imagine that.