What We Do Now

As MAGA resurges and the Democratic Party falters, many Americans are left without moral or political direction. What We Do Now offers a roadmap for navigating this uncertain moment.

This collection of essays—written by some of the nation’s leading thinkers—confronts urgent challenges including housing affordability, climate change, artificial intelligence, immigration, and more.

Together, these contributions propose bold policies and strategies for constitutionally protected dissent, helping a bewildered public chart a path forward amid an unprecedented disruption of America’s democratic traditions.Contributors include: Bill McKibben, Cory Doctorow, Ross Barkan, Raj Patel, Rutger Bregman, Eric Blanc, Angus Deaton, Osita Nwanevu, Chris Lehmann, James Galbraith, Sarah Jaffe, Thomas Geoghegan, Astra Taylor, Hamilton Nolan, Talia LevinIntroduction

Leopold Froehlich

Once again, the noble American system has failed. Institutions didn’t protect us from tyranny and our heroes were ineffective. The sacred Constitution didn’t magically intervene, and our better natures did not prevail. The guardrails that we were told would confine lawlessness were broken-down; we were assured that norms would save us, that basic human decencies would overrule brigandry.

Instead we have virtual lawlessness, a poke in the eye, grift, corruption, stupidity, emolument, someone shot in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue while the triumphant shooter strolls away, waving and grinning. It would be farcical if so many haven’t suffered.

We’ve seen much hatred and violence since the start of 2025. “There is a lot of sadism and malice in all of us,” the philosopher Richard Rorty noted, “waiting to be released when the social bond is loosened.” Rorty defined sadism as “the use of persons weaker than ourselves as outlets for our resentments and frustrations, and especially for the infliction of pain.”

Concern for a looming climactic crisis has fallen into disfavor. Laws no longer matter, except in rare street-level incidents. The Fourth Estate has been muzzled. Righteous indignation at the ravages of technology and inhuman systems is no longer deemed worthy of public attention. Madness and idiocy and ugliness have brought us to the (constant) brink of extinction, and reward us with the appalling cage-fighting spectacle of bread and circus that is our government.

How are we to respond to what Gerald Ford, in quainter times, referred to as “our long national nightmare”? We need solidarity, most of all. We must respect our communities and stand together. And we need solutions, reparations. So what is to be done?

This book contains twenty-three essays, from abstract to praxis. They offer the reader both practical advice and theoretical structure. From Rutger Bregman’s essay on the need for moral heroism to Sarah Jaffe’s essay on the appropriate nature of grieving, What We Do Now provides hope, if not solace. We can take back our country.

We have not yet begun to fight. In the words of Tom Paine: “Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”

This is our country. Let our voices be heard. Let’s go to the streets and stand up.