This episode of Fixing America with J Mel explores the damaging effect that minority control, poisonous partisan politics, and mis- and disinformation’s has had on civic participation. That, coupled with Trump’s war on the press, independent agencies, and legislative and bureaucratic oversight has prompted Americans to doubt our democracy and distort its potential. There is a better way: Subordinate politics to governance.

I have two podcasts/newsletters - Fixing America with J Mel and Short Stories by J Mel. I have been publishing an episode for each publication weekly each Tuesday. In the future, I will publish one podcast episode per week alternating between the two podcasts - an episode of Short Stories by J Mel will be published this Tuesday, June 9. An episode of Fixing America with J Mel will be published the following Tuesday. Comments are welcome.

The 2025 Presidential Transition Plan gives the roadmap this regime is using to turn our democracy into an autocracy or oligarchy. This episode reveals that roadmap with specific examples and historic references in support, as follows: create an enemy; fund an army; create chaos & fear; unlawfully seize authority; create an insurrection to quash; invoke martial law; imprison dissidents; centralize all control; use government to steal from vulnerable nations for personal gain; and institutionalize corruption.

American sovereignty belongs to the people. It is being stolen because the Rule of Law and Constitutional Limits are not being respected. This episode reviews the history of discrimination against black people, women, and immigrants to reveal that hard-fought progress made is being systemically taken away – a theft of our sovereignty.

Episode 11 explores how to make our democracy less reliant upon politics and more amenable to problem-solving by strengthening essential tenets of our democracy, beginning with Popular Sovereignty, the ‘We the People’ tenet, and its foundation of free and fair elections and leader accountability.

Many people have been told a conservative democracy will make America great again. The reality is a conservative democracy excludes or minimizes secularism and separation of church and state. We explain why that historically increases the potential for war, suppresses compromise, and denigrates the Rule of Law.

In this episode of Fixing America with J Mel, we explore the current regime’s ultimate goal and strategies. We compare those goal to how our citizens think about the legitimacy of our government and their preference to keep a democracy or reject it. And we explain how “wokeness” is a tool used to manipulate our citizens.