How does a nation endure?

Reading Dan Wang’s book Breakneck, I learned about the Ise Shrine in Japan, a Shinto shrine that is rebuilt entirely using only wood every twenty years. It will be rebuilt for the 62nd time in 2033.

Like Notre Dame, the shrine is intended for permanence. But while the builders of Notre Dame have cheated time by building in stone, the Ise Shrine embraces the inevitability of decay. The permanence of the structure is not in the strength of the material but in the craft that has been handed down over centuries.

Wang uses the shrine to make a point about process knowledge and the importance of preserving technique, in the context of his larger point that the United States has forgotten how to build things. But as I read, I could not help but think of it as an allegory for democracy, particularly in this time of democratic decay.

Those of us who love and want to preserve democracy often fixate on institutions and rules. When a court blocks the administration’s actions or an independent agency head holds firm, we rejoice that the institutions held. We watch the Trump Administration crash through democratic norms and think: we should pass laws to prevent this. We think that if we could just get to a majority, we could change the rules to make sure would-be autocrats can never get this far again. We want to build in stone.

But the lesson we should learn from this administration is not that we need greater institutional safeguards. It’s that rules and institutions cannot solve the problem of an electorate that chooses disastrous leaders and has lost its belief in democracy. Ironically, we gravitate toward those constructs as a way to preserve democracy because we don’t have faith in the judgment of the people or the leaders they choose. In that case, what does it mean to preserve democracy?

There is craft in leadership. A blindingly corrupt administration, the party of sycophants that supports it, and an opposition with no competing vision of its own tell us it’s been lost, at least at the national level.

There is craft in citizenship. A decade and more of voting for spite and conspiracy theories and false promises and vibes tells us it’s being lost.

The work ahead is not only to win an election or enact some policies. It is a broader movement that inspires Americans to relearn the craft of citizenship so that we can choose the leaders who understand leadership.