You Don’t Have a Country. You Have a Supply Chain.

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One of my standing projects is to decode “Trump’s America” for anyone who’ll listen—because if we don’t, the Democratic Party could be wandering in the wilderness for a long time. Too many critics are either waiting for the GOP to self‑destruct or hiding behind playground insults like “Drumpf” and “Cheeto Mussolini.” That’s lazy. The real work is figuring out why Trump’s agenda—sketchy and improvised as it is—still resonates. What is it about his pitch that clicks with so many voters?

A big part of that puzzle is what we call civic sovereignty. Sovereignty, in the broad sense, is the power to choose for yourself, free of outside coercion. Civic sovereignty zooms in on the United States’ capacity to decide, inside its own borders, what gets built, bought, and consumed. In other words: Americans, not Beijing, not Jerusalem, and certainly not a black‑box algorithm, should be steering the ship.

Consider China. Marvel Studios runs its scripts past Chinese censors because it needs those ticket sales. That means the CCP has a quiet veto over the next Spider‑Man storyline—an editorial power the American public never signed off on. Sure, the Pentagon also screens Marvel scripts, but at least that’s domestic. When Beijing shapes the plots our kids watch, we’ve surrendered a chunk of cultural self‑rule.

(Matt Stoller, for reference, has spoken along similar lines about the CCP’s influence on American cultural industries.)

Look at Israel. The Knesset’s priorities increasingly bleed into American speech codes. Today, criticizing Israel can get you labeled as an antisemite by default in the right context. If that’s the new definition, Americans may have to get comfortable wearing the label—because self‑censorship on behalf of a foreign state is the opposite of free expression.

Then there’s AI. Hiring algorithms are already deciding who gets interviews and what positions exist. That’s not “the market” acting on its own—that’s an opaque system making quasi‑governmental choices about the workforce. When a machine, trained on who‑knows‑what data, sets the boundaries of employment, democratic oversight evaporates.

Put all that together and you see the stakes. If foreign governments—or unaccountable algorithms—dictate what we produce, how we distribute it, and which values get baked in, America’s claim to sovereignty becomes a slogan, not a fact.

Trump frames his fight as a rebellion against that drift. Whether you buy his tactics or not, the underlying grievance—outside forces steering American life—deserves serious attention. Pentagon influence is one thing; CCP edits, Knesset pressure, or AI‑driven labor policy are another. When authority isn’t rooted in American civic processes, our sovereignty is compromised.

Real self‑government means deciding what gets made, who makes it, and why. Civic sovereignty is self‑determination in the marketplace as much as at the ballot box. Lose that, and we don’t just lose jobs—we lose the future.

So Democrats can laugh at tariffs all they want, but until they grapple with economic self‑rule, they’ll keep ceding ground. Freedom isn’t only about civil liberties; it’s about controlling production and consumption, too. Neither AI nor the CCP nor Israel gets a vote in that.

Plato saw it coming. In Republic Book II, he warned that an unrestrained market can morph into an empire of luxury, trading in vices until it needs conquest to feed its appetite. Government’s job isn’t to strangle the market but to channel it toward the common good.

If the current Democratic leadership can’t articulate that, maybe it’s time for a housecleaning—or a new party altogether. Because civic sovereignty isn’t a buzzword; it’s the front line. When AI starts allocating jobs or Chinese regulations set Hollywood standards, the question is simple: whose will is being carried out?

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people” has to include the everyday economy. Until Democrats admit that outsourcing productive power equals outsourcing political power, they’ll keep losing. Marx was right about one thing: the real power lies in production. Give that up, and you don’t just sacrifice paychecks—you forfeit control.