Gradually at First, Then Suddenly: US History and Public Education

In an oft-quoted line of Ernest Hemingway’s from The Sun Also Rises, a character laconically describes how he went broke: “Gradually at first, then suddenly.”

We have a unique historical perspectve today. For the next year, that framework remarkably captures the rise and fall of the American experiment, like this:

1. July 1776 – July 2026 – 250 years = 100% of the USA (“US History”);

2. September 2001 – September 2026 – 25 years = 10% of A (“Bush/Cheney Global War on Terror”);

3. January 2025 – July 2027 – 2.5 years = 1% of A (“Trump Neofascist Regime Change”) – More the subject of journalism and political action than history, this contemporary cadence of degraded human rights, pedagogy and democratic life writ large will be our present for the time being. And everything is on the table. Everything.

I want to consider the rise and fall of American democracy and public education “gradually, then suddenly” over these three periods, as they’ve stumbled and We the People sometimes fought back effectively, to try and clearly understand the heavy consequences of these last days of the enslaving US republic, which’ll hopefully mark new beginnings in liberation, justice, abolition & transformative change

1) enslaving african human beings to steal their labor, in a republic based on equality of all; and

2) killing and ethnic cleansing indigenous peoples to steal their lands, in a democratic republic based on rule of law.

100% of US history has turned on our attempts to resolve, evade, repeat, hide, rationalize, fight or conquer these fundamental contradictions. At first the genocidal powers of manifest destiny, racist exploitation and private corporate greed built up their national edifice on these cracked foundations. The gradual failures of our democratic governments and schools were temporarily obscured by the dynamic settler-colonial expansion phases of national growth that led to civil war.

That bloody lurch into the modern world of the 19th century seemed to settle our constitutional perversions for a while. But even after the republic and its enlightenment pretensions were jarred by military and imperial earthquakes in 1861, then again in 1917 and 1941, genocidal powers gained strength and reach. The three post-civil war constitutional amendments formally abolished slavery, expanded human rights-based freedom nationally and granted votes to Black men, but they weren’t enforced. World Wars made the Jim Crow USA a global industrial commercial and military power, then a hegemonic super power parasitically feeding a bloated and ravenous Military Industrial Complex.

In the 20th century the basic constitutional deal was fought not via sectional civil war, but in the industrial labor process reformed by the New Deal, and the century-late recognition of civil and human rights for People of Color. The multiracial Congress of Industrial Organizations led the way when global capitalism was at its low ebb in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then in the glory years of the Civil Rights movement struggles ignited by Brown vs Board of Education (1953), the Montgomery bus boycott (1955) and the lynching of Emmmet Till (1956), through the powerful and transforming Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Welfare Rights movements of the 1960s, liberal ideas characteristic (and serviceable for the power) of USA the Super Power gradually replaced frontier ‘justice’, white supremacy and patriarchal domination in our schools and communities, at least on the level of lip service.

But the last two decades of that century gave rise to neoliberal global capitalism, an enhanced system of corporate domination, soft white supremacy and self-serving identity politics. By September 11, 2001, the genocidal legacy of the enslaving republic and imperial killing power’s full spectrum dominance ushered in the next phase of our history, making New Jim Crow America greatly genocidal again from Vietnam to Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, the Strait of Hormuz and points beyond.

Bush/Cheney Global War on Terror, 2001-2026

At this writing in September 2026 we are still processing the amazing ways that racist foolishness in the Trump era laid utterly bare the abuses of the endless wars for oil and world domination in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere. Briefly, our democratic institutions in this recent 10% period have been coopted, subverted and weaponized in order to destroy our republic and replace it by technofascist billionaires’ authoritarian power. Responding to the most egregiously effective terrorist crimes ever, the hastily reorganized Homeland (formerly National) Security State arose and embarked on deadly imperial adventures and systematc human rights abuses.

From Ground Zero in New York to today’s insane and stupid proto-world wars of aggression and genocide, in Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and US-allied Middle East autocracies, US empire’s ill-conceived, militarist and racist war on terror stumbled and fell at Donald Trump’s feet. Toxic, anti-democratic and legally dubious rationales for unilateral assassination, torture, proto-fascist schooling, human and civil rights rollbacks and renewed culture wars over immigration, LGBTQ rights, abortion, and the basic scope of the new freedoms supposedly guaranteed by the post-civil war constitutiuonal amendments wobbled, cracked open and toppled. The failures of the democratic republic and its public education systems began to more rapidly and visibly weaken under sustained, well-funded attacks by right wing forces, including a militantly corrupt supreme court targeted for takeover and constitutional coup by networks of billionaires.

In 2025 the deterioration of our rights and educational opportunities accelerated beyond even those anti-terrorist excesses. A two-years long campaign to institutionalize the white supremacist, anti-constitutional breakthrough to power by Trump and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, led by fascist evil clowns Stephen Miller, Russel Vought and Elon Musk, continues today, even the under the futile and bloody flag of illegal and unconstitutional war, self-harming tariffs and a new Juan Crow assault on low wage labor markets.

Trump Neofascist Regime Change, 2025-2027

And so we find ourselves today in the extraordinarily hot 1% phase of our history. For more than a full year their neofascist coup leapt rapidly from strength to strength. A year from now they’ll be either defending against impeachment by some new Democratic legislative majority, or making a desperate lame duck lunge for total power. Social and political change this rapid is violent, disorienting, surreal and deadly.

Prominent business, educational, cultural and political elites groveled shamelessly for a new emperor’s favors. The new, six-vote dominated Handmaids Tale supreme court that deprived women of reproductive autonomy continues to enable the unitary executive neofascist theory of power, in place of the People’s constitution. The Epstein files scandal, the inevitable disasters stemming from staffing government with incompetent sycophants, and the continuing, accelerating contradictions dating back over 250 years have just begun to take their political toll on the fascist Gleichschaltung directed from Washington and Mar-a-Lago.

The 2026 midterm congressional elections will either challenge or strengthen the coup, depending on the outcomes in at most a few dozen congressional districts and a handful of states in the senate. The political consequences of this election mean that constitutional liberty or fascist violation balance on a knife edge. It is what William Burroughs called “NAKED Lunch—a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” And when everything is on the table.

In a time of simultaneous fascist coup, world war and climate catastrophe, it can be hard to discern a way forward. At the same time, if the gradual, then rapid collapse of our political and educational systems is as advanced as it appears to me, some general consequences logically follow. For example:

+ What more do we have to lose at this point by coddling capitalism and not fighting back? Abolition of dominator schools, prisons, quasi-legal political doctrines like qualified immunity and original intent that undermine self-government and equal justice under conditions of democracy, might be ripe for dumping with good, hard collective political shoves;

+ This is war. Time to stop whining about polarization, kick some fascist ass and build a new world where we really don’t negotiate with terrorists; and

+ Unlike the Obama administration faced with its predecessor’s manifest crimes of torture, spying, and war, we must look both forward to our new world based on authentic human values of justice, equality and freedom for all, and simultaneously back over our 1%, 25% and 100% histories from this year’s illuminating perspective. This means, to me, we should build our independent, revolutionary politics around campaigns to both: 1) (in the 100% frame) Renew the original, broad human (not corporate) freedom-based regime enacted, but never fully enforced, by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments; and 2) (in the 25% frame) Repeal and overturn the recent decisions of the Robert supreme court that have revived the old genocidal powers under new rationalizations.

A detailed legal/political draft of these proposals is here:

The original intentions of the provisions of the 14th Amendment are reaffirmed and extended to all natural persons, but not to corporate entities. Corporate entities may exercise powers granted them under the laws of a state, if applicable; but this Article does not extend any rights of due process of law, equal protection of the laws, or the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States to any corporate entity. In case any State law, constitution, custom or practice extends any right to due process of law, equal protection of the laws, or privileges and immunities of any state or of the United States, to any corporate entity, no court established under this Constitution may enforce, follow or apply any such state law conferring any such constitutional corporate personhood status.

All natural persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No law, government act, custom or policy may abridge the universal human rights, privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor deprive any person within its jurisdiction of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny equal protection of the laws to all persons. This Article protects all natural persons, regardless of any race, sex, class, nationality or other identity- or group-based classifications. The enforceable universal human and civil rights of natural persons recognized in this Article extend, without any exception, to all natural persons within the legal jurisdiction of the United States.

Section 2; Insurrectionists barred from office

No person shall be eligible to hold any elective office of the United States, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 3; Jurisdiction and powers of federal courts

This Constitution grants no immunity or qualified immunity for any wrongful conduct in the official capacity of any executive, legislative or judicial official.

Equal protection of the laws for the reproductive autonomy and freedom of women shall at a minimum include the right to terminate pregnancy at any time before viability of a fetus, or at any time when in the exercise of medical science and bodily autonomy the woman determines that continuing the pregnancy unreasonably endangers the life or health of either woman or fetus;

Partisan Gerrymandering is the unfair and partisan design of electoral districts to favor one party over another. Extreme partisan gerrymandering amounts to rigging elections. Claims of unconstitutional or otherwise illegal partisan gerrymandering do not present political questions or otherwise lie beyond the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Federal courts shall have the power to require electoral redistricting in states for the purpose of supporting the democratic rights of voters and prohibiting unfair partisan advantage in all elections.

Federal courts shall have no jurisdiction to overrule, repeal, subject to judicial review, narrowly interpret or otherwise undermine congressional statutes protecting the rights to vote of all American citizens, regardless of party, creed, race, sex, class, nationality or other identity- or group-based classifications. Where any eligible voter can be correctly identified, no requirement of any particular identification, in the form of official government documents or any other technical requirement for identification, may authorize the denial or abridgement of such voters’ fundamental right to vote.

Federal courts shall have no jurisdiction to overrule, repeal, subject to judicial review, narrowly interpret or otherwise undermine congressional statutes limiting the amounts of money that can be spent on any elections or otherwise regulating elections. All federal officials are under affirmative duties to respect the outcomes of elections conducted pursuant to law, and the breach of any such duty may in proper cases be insurrection or rebellion, or giving aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States or of any State.

Federal courts shall have no jurisdiction to overrule, repeal, subject to judicial review, narrowly interpret or otherwise undermine congressional statutes protecting the universal human rights, privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or of any persons within the legal jurisdiction of the United States.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this Article and the 14th Amendment, including but not limited to: further restrictions on the jurisdiction of the federal courts established under Article III; term limits for jurists; limitations on corporate personhood; procedures and standards for establishing violations of any provisions of this Article; providing financial and material support for health, including but not limited to reproductive health, and to education, cultural and other social resources and opportunities reasonably necessary to exercise, protect and defend the rights granted under the 14th Amendment and this Article; and other necessary legislative powers and directives to guide the courts. In no case shall any federal court have any jurisdiction, power or authority to reduce the scope of any legal or constitutional right of natural persons.

The U.S. Constitution is a flawed document. At the nation’s founding it granted only limited rights to a property-owning minority of men, and perpetuated the enslaving of blacks who were deemed chattel property, not people. Those unjust power relations led to a Civil War (1860-1865) between the enslaving and industrializing regions of the country.

After the multi-racial army of the “free” soil and labor north defeated the enslavement-based south, the (in effect) newly re-founded, multiracial United States of America amended the Constitution 3 times. These events fundamentally altered our democracy, the relationships between Americans, and powers of our federal, state and local governments. The 13th Amendment (1865) acknowledged the dignity and rights of people who had been liberated, and outlawed enslavement or “involuntary servitude” (except for prisoners). The 15th Amendment (1873) guaranteed rights to vote for African American men.

The longer and broader 14th Amendment (1872) was a first attempt at “perfecting the republic”. By defining citizenship as covering all people born on this land or naturalized here, the original intentions of the 14th Amendments sponsors in Congress were clear: All would be granted full rights and equal protection under the law. But the Supreme Court soon extended the 14th Amendments’ rights to corporations, and a series of court decisions severely limited – as a practical matter in many cases flatly overruled – the protection of people (while advancing corporate power).

Subsequent decisions – many of them in recent years – even further weakened the 14th Amendment, and few of its original purposes have been fulfilled. It was not until a century after the Civil War that black people were again given any significant legal protections for basic rights. The modern Civil Rights movement forced Congress to affirm basic rights through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Today those victories are also under fierce attack by powerful special interests. This proposed Constitutional Amendment is intended to undo these historic wrongs, and implement the just, multiracial democracy envisioned by the framers of the 14th Amendment.

This Article is specifically intended to overrule the following cases:

Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)

Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021)

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)

Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008)

The current Roberts Court, with the arrival of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito in 2005, has undermined our democracy, choosing in every important case to reach results undermining popular sovereignty, equal voting rights and government accountability. This proposed Constitutional Amendment is intended to undo the damage and protect the original purposes and intentions of the 14th Amendment from the courts.

The Roberts Court has issued decisions systematically dismantling federal voting rights protections and campaign finance laws, while enabling states to restrict the franchise and distort electoral outcomes. The pace of this upheaval has accelerated since 2017 with the additions of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett nominated by President Trump. The Roberts Court’s new supermajority has demonstrated a ready willingness to overturn precedent and discard long recognized constitutional rights.

The Roberts Court’s decisions have contributed to recent declines in the quality and fairness of American representative democracy. Its voting rights decisions gutted the most powerful provisions of the Voting Rights Act, hamstringing Congress’s efforts to deliver on the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment. These decisions have made it easier for states to enact restrictive voting laws and draw electoral maps that dilute votes based on race and political party, but harder or impossible for voters to challenge in court. The Court has transformed the myth of voter fraud into a free pass to enact burdensome and discriminatory voting rules, while narrowing the acceptable justifications to rein in the distorting influence of money in elections.

Most recently the Roberts Court has seemed to render decisions that owe more to the extra-textual political theory of the “unitary executive”, and its supposedly necessary power to meet the nation’s challenges, than to the Constitution. Women’s rights to control their bodies and terminate unwanted pregnancy have been overruled, supposedly because precedent was “wrongly decided”, but actually because the composition of the Court changed in 2017 with the addition of the 3 justices nominated by President Trump. Importantly, the Roberts Court’s rationales for these decisions lack any coherent or principled constitutional basis and through-line. The decisions cannot be explained, for example, by a principled commitment to judicial restraint. That could explain the Court’s uniform deference to legislatures when they assert a need for discriminatory or burdensome voting rules to combat the myth of voter fraud. But it cannot explain the Court’s refusal to afford the same deference when legislatures see a need to regulate money in politics to combat corruption. Nor can these decisions be explained by a devotion to text. And certainly these decisions cannot be explained by an abiding respect for precedent; many of them overrule key precedents without adequate justification.

The lack of a unifying theory for the Roberts Court’s anti-democracy jurisprudence leaves room to query whether the Court is guided in this realm not by some coherent judicial philosophy but by other, improper motivations. Some have, for example, pointed to the consistent partisan make-up of the winners of these decisions, an indication that the outcomes may simply reflect loyalty of the Justices to the party or ideology of the President who appointed them. Another theory is that members of the current super majority are simply averse to an egalitarian, participatory democracy in which every eligible citizen votes. Further questions have been raised about the lack of any binding ethics rules on the Court. All these questions are troubling and call for vigorous action; thus this proposed Constitutional Amendment. But beyond any individual issue, the losing parties in every one of the Court’s decisions discussed here are clearly American voters, particularly voters of color and those from marginalized backgrounds.

Since January 6, 2021, these longstanding constitutional conflicts have taken on new urgency, as the administrations of President Trump (2017-2021 and 1/20/25-present) attempt one unconstitutional (and now anti-constitutional) power grab after another. From first-term denials of equal protection and due process to immigrants and Muslims within the legal jurisdiction of the United States; through subsequent, completely unsupported and frankly autocratic declarations, like elimination of 14th Amendment birthright citizenship for unfavored groups; on and on to unilateral, unconstitutional usurpation of Congressional powers over spending, independent agencies and legislation. To the radical extent of overtly threatening courts (with foreseeable consequences of physical and deadly violence against judges and their staffs), merely for performing their constitutional role of saying what the law is.

Having been allowed to run again by the Roberts Court’s non-textualist and non-originalist misreading of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (the insurrection clause, restated verbatim as Section 2 here), and granted presumptive, broad immunity found nowhere in the Constitution by a Supreme Court super majority that has apparently lost its constitutional bearings, the Trump administration is aggressively exploiting the historic gaps and limitations in the 14th Amendment, compared to its original intentions, as discussed in detail here, rapidly elevating what has often been called a “constitutional crisis” into a literal, full-blown coup. This is our contemporary constitutional reality, not hyperbole. If we have learned anything since the American Civil War and January 6, 2021, it should be the need to protect the 14th Amendment from the courts. The question now is: What is to be done? The proposed Constitutional Amendment returns to the source of these policy conflicts and human rights violations in the unresolved issues after the Civil War. It charters a better way forward for the United States of America in the 21st century and beyond.

Such “revolutionary reforms” rooted in peoples’ movements – like the great Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century are – the only real solution to these challenges. Better lawyering by advocates for democracy is not the solution. This Court acts politically and with determination to undermine democracy, even when its stated reasons for doing so are made out of whole cloth and utterly unpersuasive. When one branch of the federal government has gone this far astray, the only solution is a firm application of the “checks and balances” the framers designed to prevent such abuses of power. Indeed, the Court’s consistent undermining of American democracy is a quintessential example of both why our Constitution leaves no single actor or institution immune from correction, and why it should be amended.

Congress must step up. It has the constitutional authority to correct many—though not all—of the Court’s most egregious anti-democratic rulings. Congress has authority over the size, jurisdiction, and other particulars of how the Supreme Court and the federal court system is structured. The framers also gave Congress the power to check the Court in other ways, such as changing the number of justices and setting term limits. But to the extent the Court continues to refuse to acknowledge and respect the other branches and the people, this proposed Constitutional Amendment will return the United States of America to the Gettysburg Address government of the people, by the people and for the people, and the Reconstruction Amendments that were intended to institutionalize that hard-fought democratic victory.

Apocalyptic and revolutionary education entails a sustained, systematic course of self-discovery. In active, practically useful engagement with today’s comprehensive crises of racial capitalism and daily life, we build up internal resistance and resources. Freedom school is always in session.