Who the hell is this guy?

I grew up in Northeast Tennessee, watching America's decline in real time. Our factories closed, our main streets emptied, and families who once built stable lives on a single income now struggle with two or three. This wasn't just happening to us - it was happening everywhere. But in Tennessee, I also grew up in the shadow of something different: the Tennessee Valley Authority, America's greatest public works project. The TVA showed what's possible when government works for the people - building infrastructure, creating jobs, and transforming one of the nation's poorest regions into an industrial powerhouse.

I come from Trump country, and I get it. Like Bernie Sanders, Trump acknowledged the pain that establishment politicians denied. He promised to take a wrecking ball to the institutions that failed us, to drain the swamp that helped create this mess. He named villains and promised vengeance. When you've watched your community collapse while politicians tell you everything's fine, that message resonates. The anger is justified.

But a wrecking ball isn't enough. Trump, like so many before him, doesn't believe in American renewal - he believes in enriching himself and his loyalists. Destruction without a plan for rebuilding just leaves us with rubble. We need more than rage. We need a vision for reconstruction.

I've seen this crisis from both sides. As Bernie Sanders' senior advisor and AOC's communications director, I worked at the highest levels of progressive politics. I co-founded Justice Democrats and helped launch the Green New Deal. I saw how Washington really works - or doesn't. I learned why both parties keep failing to deliver real solutions.

Here's what I discovered: America isn't just changing - it's being systematically dismantled. The struggling factory towns, the dying main streets, the families working harder for less - none of this is an accident. It's not inevitable. It's by design.

But I also learned something else: America still knows how to build. Our military constructs bases, hospitals, and housing with remarkable efficiency. The problem isn't that we can't - it's that we won't. We've let private interests capture our government and turn it from a builder of public goods into a piggy bank for corporations.

America's Undoing investigates how we got here and charts a path forward. Not through small solutions or market tweaks, but through a fundamental rebuilding of American capability. We're talking about the kind of bold public investment that built the TVA, the Interstate Highway System, and the Arsenal of Democracy. This isn't about left or right - it's about whether we still believe in America's capacity to build great things.

If you're tired of being told everything's fine when you know it isn't, you're in the right place. Together, we're going to expose what's broken, understand why it broke, and explore how to build something better - something built to last.