Can We Build a New Populist Movement? (Letter 4)

From Despair to Defiance: Building a Movement Rooted in Fairness, Truth, and the Will to Win

This is the fourth in a six-letter exchange between Lukium, author of The American Manifesto, and Lady Libertie of The American Pamphleteer.

Last Letter:

Can We Build a New Populist Movement? - The American Party (Letter 3)

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Dear Lady Libertie,

Your letter lit a fire—and I don’t just mean metaphorically. You’ve captured something I’ve been feeling deep in my bones for a long time: that the revolution we need isn’t going to come from Washington. It’s going to come from book clubs and break rooms, from school board meetings and truck stops, from every single place the consultants forgot to poll.

You’re right: this cannot be a top-down movement. Not because it shouldn’t be—but because it literally can’t be. The Democratic Party, as currently structured, doesn’t lead. It follows. Not in the good sense of listening to the people—but in the feeble sense of checking polls and nervously tweaking the message to avoid offense. What passes for “leadership” is mostly reaction, calibration, and a hope that we won’t notice they’re chasing trends instead of setting them.

Sure, we’ve got standouts—Bernie, AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and a few others who’ve shown they can electrify a crowd and speak to the heart of the working class. But even their reach is limited by their proximity to a party that, let’s be honest, has long since lost the plot. Their ability to ignite a truly cross-partisan movement—one that builds something bold and lasting—will always be hampered by the Democratic label they carry, fairly or not, until a grassroots movement leads to a visible, defiant rebranding.

So, I’m with you: real leadership is going to bubble up from the grassroots. Not in the form of a single savior or charismatic messiah, but in the form of millions of Americans who are tired of watching this country rot from the inside out—people who are finally ready to rise, not in the name of party, but in the name of principle.

We need to organize around values—not brands.

• Fairness, because someone who works full time should never have to choose between rent and groceries.

• Truth, because a democracy built on lies cannot survive.

• Merit, because no one should get to call themselves a “self-made success” while standing on a foundation built by the labor, sacrifice, and exclusion of others.

• Responsibility, because we should never again allow corporate giants to privatize their profits while socializing their failures.

• Transparency, because we will never trust a government that hides behind legalese, red tape, and manufactured complexity to avoid being held accountable.

But there’s something else we have to confront—something I’ve learned from watching how the Republican Party dismantled the New Deal over the past 50 years: we need more than common values; we need a common villain.

Movements die in ambiguity. We can’t, in one breath, say that democracy itself is under threat and, in the next, refer to the people trying to destroy it as “our colleagues across the aisle.” That kind of cowardice is deeply corrupting. What we are dealing with isn’t a difference in policy or temperament—it’s fascism. Not in some hyperbolic sense, but in the literal, historical one.

All the signs are there:

• A charismatic leader who demands loyalty above law, who promises a return to a mythologized past.

• The scapegoating.

• The cruelty.

• The disregard for constitutional norms and the consolidation of power.

• The dreams of retribution and even territorial expansion.

• The propaganda and the pseudo-science.

It’s all there. And if we can’t name it for what it is, we will never defeat it.

Part of why “Make America Great Again” landed is because it offered people something—however false—that felt like direction. A story. A villain. A path. And if we don’t offer something clearer, stronger, and more grounded in truth and justice—while clearly juxtaposing it against the fascism being offered by the other side—then people will keep choosing the myth.

Because right now, for millions of Americans, the American Dream has become the American Nightmare. They’ve worked 40 hours a week for decades in the richest country on Earth and still live just a few steps from where they started—or worse, a few steps behind where their parents were. That despair breeds resentment. And resentment, left untended, curdles into bigotry.

That’s the fuel the fascists—those controlling the Republican Party and brainwashing its base—have used: turning working- and middle-class pain into political firebombs.

But here’s the thing: if we can offer a real path forward—opportunity for all, not pity, not charity, not another program to manage misery—we can drain that fuel. No, we won’t reach everyone. Some people want to hate. But many don’t. They just want a reason to believe their lives can matter again.

That’s the movement we need to build.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, for all its failings, is still a vessel we can sail through this movement. It has infrastructure. Ballot access. Money pipelines. But if we do use it, it must be clear: we’re not propping it up—we’re repurposing it. And when we’re done, it might not even be called the Democratic Party anymore.

It might just be the American Party—a coalition not of ideologues, but of teachers, farmers, coders, truckers, nurses, baristas, and small business owners. A coalition of values.

As for the leaders of this movement, they are already out there. They’re the ones asking the hard questions with clarity and moral courage:

• Why shouldn’t a 40-hour workweek guarantee dignity?

• Why is public debt creating trillions in private wealth that the vast majority of Americans barely touch?

• How can we preach meritocracy when half the country starts with their hands tied behind their backs?

• How can we rebuild trust in government without radical transparency?

The people asking those questions—and refusing to stop—are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.

So let’s find them. Let’s lift them up. Let’s build the scaffolding they’ll need to rise—and ensure they have the strength and support to stand tall as the old order crumbles beneath them.

You’re right, Lady Libertie.
There are more of us than there are of them.
But only if we act like it.
And only if we organize like it.

Onward,
Lukium
The American Manifesto