This one made it into the book. I wrote it in 2000, when I was twenty-something and believed the best way to be honest about a political philosophy was to write it down in full, admit its limits, and invite argument. Looking back on it now, the essay aged better than I expected — not because the ideas were correct, but because the method was honest.
A manifesto is a strange document to write. Most of them are dishonest in a specific way: they present beliefs as certainties, frameworks as facts, and the author’s current mood as timeless principle. I tried to do the opposite. The opening of my anarchist manifesto says explicitly that my beliefs are constantly evolving, that I won’t agree with everything in it later, and that I strongly discourage anyone from adopting my ideas wholesale without doing their own thinking first. This is not a typical manifesto move.
What I believed at the time: anarchism is a political system composed of no system. The goal is to enable complete human beings to exercise free will to the extent that other human beings are not restricted in their own exercise of free will. Not chaos — structure, but structure that emerges from below rather than being imposed from above. The distinction matters. Imposed structure tends toward the interests of whoever does the imposing. Emergent structure tends to reflect what people actually need.
The essay works through this: what power is, where it comes from, how it legitimizes itself, and why I found the anarchist critique of the state more honest than the mainstream alternatives being offered in American politics circa 2000. Two parties. Both operating within a system that served capital before constituents. I wasn’t optimistic about revolution. I was clear-eyed about the problem.
Twenty-six years later the analysis holds. The system is still there. So is the problem. What’s changed is scale.
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*This piece was expanded and collected in [Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/) — essays about America observed from the outside, by someone who left and couldn’t quite believe what he found when he looked back. Available in Kindle and paperback.*
**[Get Not My America on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/)**
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**You might also like:** [It’s not a New America – It’s the same it always was](https://www.vagobond.com/its-not-a-new-america-its-the-same-it-always-was/), [Secret of ageing no longer a secret](https://www.vagobond.com/secret-of-ageing-no-longer-a-secret/), [The Newest Thing…Craigslist meets Youtube](https://www.vagobond.com/the-newest-thingcraigslist-meets-youtube/)
*Browse the full CD Damitio catalog at [indignified.com/books](https://indignified.com/books)*
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I called most of this chaos years ago. America is still unraveling — and the next chapters are already written.
If you want to understand what’s really coming (and why), read Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land. Available on Amazon.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
