Frank DiStefano

If you want a rich and productive life, and to play your role as a citizen of a democracy, you must be curious.

We need to bring back the middlebrow.

Rulers don’t train their heirs in marketing and software engineering. They train them in history, philosophy, political strategy, mythical stories, and religion.

You must understand the world and humanity before you can govern them.

The world wants you to be a worker. It wants you educated enough to do the work it needs, but doesn’t care whether you have the skills necessary to govern yourself and the democracy as a citizen.

Rich and famous people tell you it’s silly to study history, art, or philosophy because they won’t make you money or get a job. You should study engineering or STEM.

What they mean is it isn’t useful for you.

Some people blame the death of middlebrow on the supply—the people who make culture can make more money selling you things you already know you want.

I think the real reason is we’re no longer an aspirational culture that way.

Middlebrow culture used to be everywhere in America. If you watch old shows, you always find people learning French, reading literary novels, going to Broadway plays, or learning to cook fine cuisine.

Today you rarely find it.

A lot of influencers will help you get fit, start a company, or meditate to gain focus and efficiency. It's about getting things—more money, more happiness, more effectiveness.

Middlebrow culture isn't about getting richer, but becoming a better, wiser, more complete person.

Bring Back the Middlebrow You're more than just a worker. Learning and bettering yourself are necessary to be a democratic citizen.

We need to bring back middlebrow culture. Middlebrow culture like art, poetry, history, great books, learning languages, philosophy, dance, and museums is aspirational culture.

It's meant to push you to make you better.
www.renew-the-republic.com/p/bring-back...

This moment is one of transition in which our parties struggle to get to a new state (or otherwise get replaced if they fail). This isn’t the final form of either the Republican or Democratic Party.

The Brokenist-Denialist political spectrum means our current coalitions are only temporary. You can’t permanently organize politics around defending the indefensible, or around dismantling what’s broken without a coherent agenda that unites your coalition to fix it.

It’s because the "right" has become a rebellion against the system. It’s attracting anyone who thinks America is broken—as Oliver Wiseman called them Brokenists. The Democrats have become a coalition defending the status quo. They’re Denialist.

What does that mean for America?

THE BROKENISTS DID NOT MOVE RIGHT People haven't moved politically. It’s a different fight. It’s also transitional. This isn't the final form of the Republican or Democratic Parties.

Why have so many prominent people from the left “moved right” (think Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Taibbi, and RFK)? They didn’t change their views, and the left-right spectrum was never real or permanent anyway.

www.renew-the-republic.com/p/the-broken...

We need an action bias for government.

If I were in charge, I wouldn’t go about it like DOGE, but maybe this will shake us loose to recognize that trying to fix problems, failing, making mistakes, and fixing them, is better than never trying to fix what’s broken at all.

It’s useful to remember the real story of the New Deal—not the one you heard in school, but the one with the mistakes and fumbles and wrong roads we abandoned. At the end we got some big things right like Social Security, which we locked in and benefitted from forever.

American government used to do things. We built interstate highway systems, Marshall Plans, and moon rockets. Then we got too concerned with making mistakes and not enough about fixing problems, failing, and then trying again until we fixed them.

Where was the liberal DOGE, the centrist DOGE, the progressive DOGE? Why didn’t Obama do a DOGE? Or Bush and Cheney, who claimed to care about wasteful government? Why didn’t Biden do a DOGE last year? (Don’t talk to me about Clinton and Gore’s failed “Reinventing Government.")

DOGE, Action Bias, and the New Deal Put aside whether you think DOGE is good or bad. What interests me is why it hasn’t happened before in my lifetime.

The question isn’t whether what DOGE is good or bad (it’s some of both). It’s why no one has done anything similar around their priorities and beliefs—going through federal agencies and programs and laws to ensure they’re doing what we expect them to?
www.renew-the-republic.com/p/doge-actio...

Five Reflections on the First Month of the Second Trump Presidency, in Light of the Realignment Here are the five most surprising developments, and what I think they mean for the current realignment and future of America.

Five Reflections on the First Month of the Second Trump Presidency:

I. Trump and his brand of politics is normal now
II. Republicans have become the cool party
III. DOGE is important
IV. Foreign policy matters again
V. Woke isn’t dead; it’s losing

www.renew-the-republic.com/p/five-refle...

This is the self-help program I believe in. Bring back American virtues, and synchronize your heartbeat with the heartbeat of America.

What are those American virtues?

▪ Love of Democracy
▪ Industriousness
▪ Independence
▪ Curiosity
▪ Risk Taking
▪ Public Spirit
▪ Guardian Mentality

I'm talking the American traits of figures from history we admire, and classic American archetypes like cowboys, outlaws, rock stars, iconoclasts, and bold entrepreneurs.

The traits of George Baily, Elvis Presley, Teddy Roosevelt, Wyatt Earp, Superman, and John McClane.

You Should Become a Virtuous Citizen A self-help program to become the American you ought to be.

If you want to find meaning and purpose in your life and become the person you want to be, become a virtuous American citizen.

I don’t mean kindness, charity, or sexual morality. I mean character.

www.renew-the-republic.com/p/you-should...

Sound familiar?

Personally, I do the opposite and work to restore America's tributaries to into reliable partners with vitality. I think a North Empire empire is a losing strategy, and the empire of tributaries is the only way to avoid the Thucydides Trap or win that war.

4. You probably want to secure the Southern border and ensure a friendly government in Mexico.

5. You would consider trying to ally with Russia, a nuclear power on China's border that could turn into a Chinese ally.

2. You also might want control of Greenland, in the hands of an unreliable European nation like Denmark too.

3. You also probably want control over the Panama Canal, which China is gaining influence over.

1. You probably want to harden America's northern border with a Canada that's economically valuable, in our cultural sphere, and strategically important. If you thought it was unreliable and drifting the same direction as Europe, perhaps you consider controlling it more directly.

If you believed that America's vassals in the Western alliance are no longer willing or able to fight alongside America in a possible coming war against China, what moves would you make?

Should America Be a Bully? Is it in America’s interest to throw around its considerable weight to get its way? That depends on your view of Thucydides and China.

The Trump administration’s seemingly perplexing moves to bully formerly friendly nations is almost certainly rooted in a logic about future war with China.

Should America throw off its empire of tributaries to build a hardened empire in North America?
www.renew-the-republic.com/p/should-ame...

Politics, which still views “the economy” as about graphs and statistics like inflation and unemployment, doesn’t even have language to talk about the changing nature of work.

Now the arrival of AI threatens to blow this entire system, already hanging by a weak thread, apart.

The nature of work in America has changed, creating a tragedy of the commons for democracy. What makes sense of each company (treating workers as items on a spreadsheet and demonstrating little loyalty and mobility) collectively damages America and the American Dream.