In our latest newsletter, we asked “In what kind of society would President Donald Trump be impossible?”

Ron Shaich, the former CEO of Panera turned political activist, believes that Donald Trump is the equivalent of political cocaine, creating an instant but temporary economic high with devastating after effects. Shaich maintains this is “the result of many decades of short term thinking by public companies focused solely on stock valuation.” 

His solution is something he calls the “Long-Term Stock Exchange,” in which investors who have held shares the longest have more influence over company decisions. Read the New Yorker article here.

In contrast, conservative columnist David Brooks of the NY Times believes that we have become a dysfunctional society of tribal grievance because we no longer have a shared national story. He suggests that in place of fractious identity politics, we need a unifying new American narrative predicated on our historic role as a “redeemer nation.” See his op-ed here.

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore says “…the lesson that Trump has taught everyone is that just doing a little bit – just voting – isn’t enough. Everybody has to get up off the bench and get in the game.”

Moore believes that “we’re doomed” if we think a special prosectutor or the Democratic Party or the Constitution will save us. Says Moore, “Democracy has no self-correcting device; it literally can end in a flash. It’s only the actions of the people that will protect and defend and save it.” See Moore’s USA Today interview here.

I agree with parts of all these analyses, but when Moore, for example, says that only the actions of “the people” will save us, what, exactly, does he have in mind?

Who will write the new American narrative that Brooks envisions? 

How will the long-term valuation in the stock market envisioned by Shaich be institutionalized, and will it really break our current political impasse?

Nearly all analyses of Donald Trump’s political ascendancy argue that the US has to make major political and economic adjustments to survive as a democracy. Yet the role of “civil society” in this process is rarely discussed.

The primary role of free civil association is as a process for producing citizens. In a healthy democracy, it is a sector comprised of voluntary associations in which neither governments nor private markets are sovereign. Civil society, can, but does not always, solve problems. Most importantly in a functioning democratic republic, the experiences of civil association create emotionally mature citizens, not easily manipulated partisan hacks. Read more here.

Over the past two years of travel and political field research in Europe and the Americas, I have repeatedly witnessed a resilience and civic creativity among citizens that hold profound lessons for creating a democratic civil society grounded in an optimistic politics of community. Visit our website for details.

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