“Restore our democracy” has become a mantra among American progressives. Populist writers are desperately trying to shake people from their passivity amidst mounting political and ecological crisis. But in crafting a vision of a better future they often appeal to idealized, romantic notions of America’s past.

Chris Hedges recently attributed the rise of Donald Trump to a “corporate coup” that happened “more than two decades ago,” leaving Trump in command of a state devoid of meaningful democratic input or checks — a situation he refers to as “fascism.” His antidote is the Green Party, whose leaders Ralph Nader and Jill Stein “saw this dystopia coming” but were foiled by “elites” and “so-called progressives” who “succumbed to the idiotic mantra of the least worst.” Similarly, Bernie Sanders’s recent op-ed in the New York Times ends with a call for the Democratic Party to “break loose from its corporate establishment ties and, once again, become a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor.”

These kinds of interpretations rely on naive civics-textbook notions of the history and workings of the American state; they support political strategies of either reforming the Democratic Party or voting for the Green Party, while concealing the shortcomings these approaches entail.