The Dangerous Illusion of American Constitutional Faith

The story we’ve been told is simple: America’s system of checks and balances will protect us. It’s supposed to stop tyranny, restrain corruption, and self-correct when things go wrong. This is the foundation of American civic religion—the belief that the system will save us from the system.

But that belief is not just misguided—it’s dangerous.

The system was never built to save us. It was built to control us.

The Constitution Was Never Neutral

The Constitution is often described as a living document, but for Black, Indigenous, and working-class people, it has functioned more like a weapon. It was never designed to protect the oppressed. It was designed to protect wealth, property, and the ruling class.

The so-called separation of powers was not crafted to stop injustice—it was designed to manage power among elites. The framers were not checking slavery. They were not restraining colonial land theft. They were preserving a system that served them.

The Constitution’s core purpose has always been to secure property rights, expand empire, and safeguard white supremacy. Its “checks” have never applied equally. For the marginalized, the system’s checks have been handcuffs.

Power Defends Power

The state’s three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—operate with striking unity when protecting their own interests.

Presidents command police and the military. Legislatures fund them. Courts shield them from accountability.

This isn’t dysfunction—it’s coordination. It’s how the system maintains order, suppresses resistance, and sustains power.

When freedom movements arise, the branches don’t check each other. They converge to shut them down. Abolitionists, labor organizers, Black freedom fighters, and anti-war activists have all faced this unified repression.

The people are not protected from the state. The state is protected from the people.

The Courts Are No Safeguard

Many cling to the hope that the courts will defend democracy. History suggests otherwise.

The Supreme Court enshrined slavery, upheld segregation, shredded voting rights, and consistently sided with capital over labor. Even its rare progressive rulings have been strategic concessions aimed at preserving systemic stability.

The courts have validated wars, mass incarceration, forced sterilizations, voter suppression, and the militarization of police. They have expanded corporate power while eroding reproductive rights and civil liberties.

The courts are not neutral referees. They are instruments of state and corporate power.

Congress Is Part of the Problem

Congress has passed the crime bills, the war authorizations, the police funding packages, and the corporate bailouts that sustain oppression.

Its role has been less about checking power and more about legalizing its expansion. State legislatures have been equally complicit, suppressing votes, criminalizing dissent, and erasing Black political power through gerrymandering and racist policy.

The idea that Congress will rescue the nation from authoritarian drift ignores its long record of actively building the structures of repression.

The Executive Branch Is Growing Without Limits

Presidents have steadily expanded executive power—through wars, surveillance, policing, and emergency powers—with little resistance from other branches.

Democratic and Republican administrations alike have overseen drone strikes, family separations, police militarization, and mass deportations. Campaign promises fade, but executive power only grows.

The presidency’s unchecked authority is not a glitch. It is a feature of a system that consolidates power wherever it can.

The System Is Not Broken

It’s comforting to believe something went wrong. That we’ve veered off course. That with the right leaders, the right laws, or the right judges, the system can heal.

But this isn’t a detour. It’s the road.

The system isn’t broken. It is working as designed.

For centuries, it has reliably protected wealth, punished the poor, suppressed dissent, and preserved white dominance. There is no golden age of American democracy to return to. For the enslaved, the colonized, the incarcerated, and the exploited, the system has always worked just fine—for someone else.

Why People Still Believe

Belief in checks and balances persists because it’s easier than facing the truth. It allows those with privilege to imagine that justice can be voted into existence, that procedural reforms will save us, and that American institutions are fundamentally good but temporarily mismanaged.

This belief delays action. It cushions the conscience. It suggests we can fine-tune the master’s house rather than tear it down.

What Actually Changes History

The power to transform society has never come from within the system. It comes from the streets, from mass movements, from people who refuse to obey.

Enslaved people didn’t wait for permission to rebel. Workers didn’t wait for Congress to grant them dignity. Civil rights organizers didn’t wait for the courts to bless their cause.

Change comes from collective action that disrupts the system, not from appeals to its conscience.

Abandon the Illusion

Checks and balances will not save us from climate collapse, from authoritarian rule, from systemic violence, or from deepening inequality.

But we might save each other.

Through mass organizing.

Through direct action.

Through building new structures that do not rely on the consent of the powerful.

This is not a call to despair. It’s a call to grow up.

The system will not rescue us. It never has.

It’s time to stop begging it to.

Let’s build something else.