Welcome, reader, it’s wonderful to see you again.
Over the past four articles, I’ve done my best to show you my vision for our future, to explain how it works, and to convince you that of all the ways we could react to everything that’s going on in the world right now, this one gives us the chance to actually make our voices heard, in a real, lasting way. I hope I’ve gotten through to you, at least a little, that this is not just a fantasy, and that this isn’t just words on the Internet.
You might have noticed, though, that while I’ve been talking quite a bit about the No Confidence Amendment I drafted, I haven’t shared its actual text with you yet. That changes now; along with this article, I’ve posted both the current draft of the text and an explainer that lays each point out in plain language.
I lay no claim to being perfect. I can see the corruption in our government, and I can see what it will take to free ourselves from it, but I’m only one person, and I can’t see everything—I need your eyes, too, reader. Please look over the explainer and think about what it will mean to you. Imagine how your state might implement Restricted Elections; I’ve done my best to ensure that there is no way to bias the outcome and still meet the requirements, but I’ll be a lot happier if I have you and everyone else to check my work.
If you have a legal background, please check the draft text as well; is there anything that I or my reviewers have missed that might cause problems or delays? We’re trying something very new here already, and if I’ve missed sanding down any of the rough spots, any amount of friction could be enough to keep us from achieving our goal.
In order to make No Confidence a part of our Constitution and unfuck US politics, we need the legislatures of thirty-eight of the fifty states to agree that it’s a good idea. We need them to agree that things are so bad right now that it is worth trying to do something that we’ve never tried before. That magic number is our target. If we make it to 38 ratifications, we win. History changes course; the future grows brighter. The work continues, of course, because there’s so much else that needs unfucking, but we will have taken a solid first step towards a better world.
The flip side of that coin, of course, is that it only takes thirteen states to block No Confidence. Only thirteen states have to decide that doing something like this, especially now of all times, right before midterm elections, is just too risky—and we lose our chance. If we were to put the question of ratification to them now, on the day I post this article, I fully expect all of them would decide that.
We’re going to change their minds. We’re going to do that before the question gets put to them as a whole, before they have to take a public stance one way or another, before they’ve even gotten word that a new Amendment to the Constitution is on the table. We’re going to let each and every one of our representatives in the state legislatures know that No Confidence is coming, and that when the question is put to them later this year, they must support it, or they will lose the confidence of their constituents.
Did you know, that of the 7,386 seats in the legislatures of the fifty United States, all but around 800 of them are up for re-election this November?
So there’s our first goal, reader, and we’ve only got a few months to do it in. We need to till the fields and sow our seeds now, if we’re to have any chance of them sprouting in time to help us. You and I can’t do it on our own, of course, but we have help—everyone else who subscribes to Unfucking The World also wants a brighter future for us all. We may not agree on anything else besides that, but that’s enough.
I can’t possibly come up with a strategy comprehensive enough to sway enough people in this country to make No Confidence a reality by November, but thankfully, I don’t need to. You know your community better than I do, reader. What is important to them? What can you say to your neighbors that will make them enthusiastic for No Confidence?
We could never have managed something like this in the eighteenth century, nor the nineteenth nor even the twentieth, but this is the twenty-first. Your online connections allow you to spread the word from community to community, skipping all across the United States and beyond, completely unbound by geography; your in-person connections allow you to build support within your community, until your voice is loud enough that those you’ve elected to represent you have no choice but to listen. Until our voices are loud enough that every single state legislator knows that when the question is finally asked of them, they must say yes without hesitation.
Now I have a question for you, reader, and I want you to take some time to think carefully about it. Consider the shape of your life, right now, today. Think about your obligations and your opportunities, about where you go to have fun and what you do to wind down. Where does No Confidence fit in that tapestry? What kind of energy can you bring to our fight, without spending so much of yourself that you don’t have enough left for the rest of your life? The point of community is that no person should ever have to shoulder a burden heavier than they can carry, and that goes for activism just as much as for labor.
Maybe you have just a little bit of energy, here and there, but your schedule is completely packed. You can help. Reach out to your friends online; post on your socials; chat with your coworkers on your lunch break. Tell them about No Confidence yourself, if you like; if they’re as enthusiastic for a change as you are, they’ll be delighted to hear the good news from you. If politics isn’t something you feel like talking about, then just tell them about Unfucking The World. Let them come to their own conclusions.
Maybe you have a little bit of free time on your days off, and you want to devote some of your time to doing something worthwhile. You can help. Print out flyers, if you have the means; spread the word amongst your community where you live. Walk outside; say hi to your neighbors, and give them the good news that this horror show is finally about to end. Call your state legislators and tell them you support the No Confidence Amendment, and that you expect them to do the same when it’s time.
Maybe you, like me, have reached the point where not doing anything hurts more than anything else. You can help, I promise. Join one of the online communities organizing for No Confidence, or start your own; I’ve started a couple myself, but I can’t possibly organize everything on my own. Start a local activist group in your community. Set up a meeting to speak with your state legislator in person; print out one of the No Confidence explainers to bring along, since they probably won’t have even heard of it yet. Tell them in your own words why we need this change so badly.
Maybe you don’t have anything to spare, and even reading this newsletter feels like a stretch. You are already helping. No political movement in world history has ever attempted to gain so much support as quickly as we must, to show the politicians how serious we are. In order to do that, we must demonstrate to the algorithms how serious we are, so that they start spreading the word themselves. In short: we must go viral. Even if all you can do is subscribe to the newsletter and hit the like button, you are making a difference in our fight. You are doing enough.
Never doubt that we will face opposition, and not just from those who have something to gain from the existing corruption in our government. No Confidence is a drastic step, the likes of which have never been seen in our country’s history, and I don’t blame anyone for being nervous about it upon first encountering the idea. I’ve done my best to help you understand both why it’s necessary and what makes it our best option; I’d like to think that the fact that you’re still reading means I’ve succeeded, at least a little.
We can do this, reader. We have only seven thousand minds to change, and there are so many more of us than there are of them. The strategy is simple: we each ask our state legislators to support No Confidence. If they say no, we go and talk to our neighbors and we bring them on board, and then we ask again. If they continue to say no, when we bring more and more people to tell them that we need this? Well then, by that point we’ll have enough people this November to replace them with someone who will listen.
And if you are a state legislator, reader? First off, thank you. You do so much of the work every day that actually keeps our country running smoothly, and you do it without the fame and prestige that come along with being elected to Congress. Our country works best when all of its powers are balanced, and we’re seeing the effects now of what happens at the federal level when too much of the power has shifted over to the White House, away from Congress and the courts.
There’s another balance in this country, between the central authority of the Federal Government and the inherent sovereignty of the States, and it has been tipping steadily towards the centralization of power for hundreds of years. It’s time we start dragging the needle back in the other direction. We must remind the Federal Government that its mandate comes from you, and that your mandate comes directly from the people, and we finally have a way to do that.
As long as we have the numbers, the state legislators will be on our side. Their constituencies are small enough, and the bar for entry in running for office is low enough, that they simply can’t afford to ignore a growing movement in their district the way a member of Congress can—not that I expect it would ever come to that. All you need to worry about in order for us to have our victory is spreading the word as far and as fast as you possibly can: it’s finally time.
I’ll be working on the other half of the equation, because that is a job that one person can do. The states can’t amend the Constitution on their own; the amendment must be proposed in order to be ratified, and that task requires the cooperation of Congress.
Would you like to know what I was best-known for, reader? Back when I was an architect, when I was the last resort before my company lost millions of dollars? I told you before that I was good at finding the answers to any technical problems that came along, but it went beyond that. Other people at my company knew as much about our software as I did, but I could explain problems like no one else could.
Time and time again, I was called into meetings with CEOs, CTOs, executives, and finance officers, and the pattern was the same each and every time: their voices would start out hostile, suspicious, uncertain. (This was before Zoom let us see everyone’s faces during teleconferences.) I would answer every single question they had, and I would explain why our solution was the best option for them in particular, and why whatever problem they’d been worried about wasn’t going to impact their bottom line. And every single time, once I was finished, the voices I heard were all warmth and relief. It was one of my very favorite parts of that job, hearing the relief in a person’s voice when someone made a problem they were worrying about disappear in front of their eyes.
What every single one of those executives wanted was reassurance that the decisions they had made, or were making, or were going to make, were good ones, choices that would help their company thrive. They were nervous, thinking that if they worked with us, they wouldn’t have access to the expertise and support they needed, when anything went wrong. All they needed was to see that we, as a company, could handle anything that went wrong—so I showed them that, even in the worst-case scenario, I could pinpoint what was broken, fix the immediate problem, and commit on the spot to ensuring that it would never fail in that way again. I could do that, because I had expertise, and I had confidence, and I had the reputation and influence that came from being a top architect at my company, which I’d spent years and years building.
I still have the confidence. I still have the expertise—the particular domain I worked in was software, but the skills I developed were more generic than that. They allow me to look at a system, any kind of system, and see how it should work when things are going right, and where the most likely points of failure are, and what types of vulnerabilities it must be cautious of. The one thing I lack is the reputation; they have no reason to listen to me.
You are my solution, reader, and I will do everything in my power to be yours. As long as our numbers continue to grow, you will be giving my voice more weight; you will make it impossible for them to ignore me when I knock on their doors. When I tell them about the change that is coming, how they are vulnerable to it, and what they can best do to protect themselves, your presence behind me in that room will give them no choice but to take me seriously. When the words “No Confidence” grace the front page of every newspaper in the country, they will know that the time has finally come, and their only choice is whether to help us themselves or be replaced by someone who will.
I promise you, reader. You deliver me the States, and I will deliver you Congress. It might take a week to gather that kind of support; it might take months; it might require us to follow through on our intentions to vote against our state legislators in November. (I have the easy job. A member of Congress who stands against the will of their State does not last long in Congress; I only need to remind them of that.) There are only two questions left to be answered, and I can’t answer them without your help:
How loud will our voice grow? And, how long will it take us to grow it?
I have one more bit of wisdom to share with you, but it’s going to take a little while to explain, so I’ll leave that for next time.
Until then, and always: stay safe.
Thank you for being part of the fight. Today, July 3, marks six months from the day when President Trump had President Maduro kidnapped from Venezuela, and thus today also marks six months from the day I realized the No Confidence Amendment I’d drafted a month prior actually stood a chance.
You have the data, now. You know why there is reason to hope, and also why that can’t be a passive, idle hope, it must be one we grab onto with both hands and don’t let go. Use everything I’ve shared with you, and come up with ideas of your own for how to promote UTW. Make flyers. Record videos. Write songs. Get your neighbors involved. I’ll highlight the efforts of the community at UTW.vote, so that you can see you aren’t alone.
Questions, challenges, additions, and thoughtful disagreements are encouraged in the comments; bring your good faith, and others will do the same. Today’s topic: what are you, personally, planning to do to support No Confidence?
Share this with everyone you know, and stay safe.
–Danielle
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