The Fourth Republic Has to be Something New
In the early phases of the Urban Theater, we're taking a micro level approach to the issue of federal retrenchment and hostility toward state and local governments. We're doing this by tying theory from thinkers like Jane Jacobs, Carl Abbott, Michel de Certeau, and Henri Lefebvre to urban tacticians like Jeffrey Hou, and Richard Schragger. A parallel discussion naturally arises from this very practical work of reclaiming governance at the state and local level: what will the new Federalism look like once cities and states realign/reinvigorate/reassert their collective authority?
Scholars such as Ted Lowi, Bruce Ackerman and Michael Lind have written extensively around this topic for decades. But at this time of genuine political instability and peril this discussion hasn't yet trickled down to the mainstream of political and civic discussion. It's not yet salient. That's puzzling.
Today in the NYT, we do get a futurecast from a great trio of commentators, David Brooks, E.J. Dionne, Jr., and Robert Siegel. The conversation begins by asking the question, what do Democrats have in relation to Trump's "religion?" But that's not really the interesting part. The recognition that America cannot simply go back to our existing Republic post-Trump is the compelling part.
David Brooks makes his first key observation right out of the urban studies playbook: to succeed (at what is yet to be determined) the No Kings movement must be a block → neighborhood → City level movement. As he explains,
The civil rights movement conducted a soap opera every day. They told the story every day about segregation, and through that repeated storytelling, you really built the movement. You gave the segregators an unwinnable proposition. When you control the streets, either they cede the streets to you or they crack down on you and look like monsters. And that’s a way to achieve civic power.
And then Brooks follows with these (excerpted) observations:
What I think Democrats need to do is understand that they can’t go back to their core narratives. Democrats have had some great narratives. The New Deal: We’re going to soften capitalism and make it more humane. In the 1960s: We’re going to take people who’ve been marginalized and we’re going to give them respect. Those are great narratives, but they’re not narratives right now.
The final thing I’d say is there’s a Bulgarian political scientist who made the observation that once the revolution happens, everybody changes. So, it’s not just the Republican Party. He makes a point that the Democratic Party is going to change just as much as the Republican Party. And then he makes the point that once the revolution happens, you can’t go back to who you were.
So I just emphasize how radically different people have to think about where we’re going to be in five years.
Five years. That's not a lot of time to realign messaging, core values, salience or establish new leadership outside the Gerontocracy, let alone build the platform for the next Republic.
We need to get to work.
