Photo Credit: Daily Mail
From Representation to Reaction: How the America of Mamdani has drifted from a Constitutional Republic to Governance by Outrage. There was a time—very intentionally designed—when the United States did not attempt to govern itself by volume. The Founders did not build a system that responded to whoever yelled the loudest, trended the hardest, or dominated the news cycle. They built a constitutional republic: a structure where citizens elected representatives for their judgment, then trusted those representatives to govern within legal boundaries.
That distinction matters. A lot.
A republic assumes something unfashionable today: that wisdom, experience, and restraint are virtues; that leadership requires insulation from constant pressure; and that good governance often looks boring, incremental, and resistant to fads. Democracy chose the leaders. The republic trusted them to lead.
Somewhere along the way, that trust collapsed.
What replaced it wasn’t a better system—it was a noisier one.
The Rise of the “Side Hustle” Mentality
Modern politics increasingly feels like an audition rather than a vocation. Public office, once treated as a serious responsibility, is now often approached as a stepping stone to something else. The incentives are obvious. The louder the performance, the bigger the following. The bigger the following, the easier the transition into post-office influence, consulting, or corporate leadership.
When officials govern with one eye on the present and the other on their future résumé, policy suffers. Decisions become symbolic rather than practical. Outcomes matter less than optics. And long-term consequences are subordinated to short-term applause. The chairman of one government agency’s side hustle often becomes pandering to the very institution they are tasked with overseeing. By day, they enforce policy; by night, they count down the days until they leave office and reemerge as an executive at the very corporation they were supposed to regulate.
This is not a partisan critique. It’s an institutional one. When the reward structure favors spectacle over competence, you get exactly what you incentivize.
When Governance Becomes Performance
A republic functions on delegation. The electorate chooses leaders precisely so it doesn’t have to vote on every impulse, reaction, or emotional surge. The system was designed to slow things down—to force deliberation, debate, and cooling-off periods.
But today, everything moves at the speed of outrage.
Every decision is litigated in real time. Every policy is dissected on social media before the ink dries. Judges are pressured to become policymakers. Agencies are pushed to act as moral referees rather than technical regulators. Influencers—unelected, unaccountable, and often uninformed—are treated as authorities simply because they command attention.
The result is paralysis masquerading as participation.
Nothing can be decided without instant backlash. Nothing can be implemented without immediate resistance. And nothing is allowed the time required to prove whether it works.
The Collapse of Meaningful Language
Perhaps the most damaging shift is linguistic. Words that once described specific, serious phenomena are now deployed as blunt instruments. Complex economic realities are flattened into moral slogans. Disagreement is recast as malice. Nuance is treated as betrayal.
A recent and widely circulated example illustrates the problem. Housing “activist” Cea Weaver publicly described homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy.” That statement is striking not just for its provocation, but for what it reveals about how far our public discourse has drifted from reality.
I come from a family of lawyers and doctors—people who studied hard, worked hard, bought homes, raised children, and some of us were even lucky to have a well-groomed lawn where our kids could play. Now I am a “white supremacist”? Raising a proper family, believing in the power of education and family values was never about politics or power; it was about being a responsible and contributing member of society. Homeownership comes with a whole heck of a lot of taxes that fund schools and urban development. Yet today, that same life is casually labeled immoral. Consider the irony: housing activist Cea Weaver, who publicly described homeownership as a ‘weapon of white supremacy,’ grew up in a single-family home in Rochester, New York, purchased by her father in 1997 for approximately $180,000—that’s roughly $360,000 in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars. Publicly reported records apparently show that her mother now owns a home valued at approximately $1.6 million, while her father owns a separate home valued near $700,000 and manages rental properties. That is not deprivation. That is stability, equity, and opportunity—the very foundations now being condemned. When achievement is recast as oppression and discipline is treated as moral failure, we are no longer having a serious policy conversation; we are engaging in ideological theater.
Homeownership, historically and practically, has been one of the primary ways ordinary families—across races, backgrounds, and generations—build stability, equity, and independence. To reduce that concept to an ideological accusation is not serious analysis; it is rhetorical demolition. It replaces economic understanding with moral labeling and treats achievement itself as something suspect.
When language is used this way, it ceases to inform and begins to inflame. It shuts down conversation rather than advancing it. And when such framing migrates from activist circles into policymaking discussions, it distorts outcomes in ways that harm the very people it claims to protect.
As a lawyer, I can tell you that words matter. Definitions matter. Intent matters. Context matters. A system that abandons those principles in favor of ideological shorthand cannot administer justice consistently—or credibly.
A functioning republic depends on shared meanings. When everything becomes an accusation and nothing is a discussion, governance devolves into theater.
Courts, Pressure, and the Misuse of Power
Courts were never meant to be the frontline for political grievances. Their role was to interpret law, not to substitute their judgment for that of elected officials acting within constitutional limits. When every policy dispute is reframed as a legal emergency, the judiciary is pulled into a role it was not designed to play.
This erodes public confidence in the courts and politicizes outcomes that should be rooted in statute and precedent. Judges are human. Constant pressure distorts decision-making, even when intentions are good.
A republic works when each branch respects its lane.
The Human Cost of Institutional Decay
All of this may sound abstract, but the consequences are not.
When governance becomes reactive and incoherent, ordinary people pay the price. Markets destabilize. Communities fracture. Public trust erodes. Fear replaces confidence. And individuals—particularly professionals who operate in the real world of consequences—become targets rather than participants.
As someone who practices law, I see this daily. Law is not a slogan. It is not a feeling. It is not a viral clip. It is structure, process, and accountability applied to human behavior.
A society that treats those foundations casually invites disorder.
What the Founders Understood—and We’ve Forgotten
The Constitution was not naïve about human nature. It assumed ambition, self-interest, and conflict. That’s why it built guardrails. Separation of powers. Checks and balances. Representation over mob rule.
The system was never perfect—but it was deliberate.
What we are witnessing now is not reform. It is abandonment.
We’ve confused responsiveness with wisdom, volume with legitimacy, and participation with interference. In doing so, we’ve weakened the very structure that allowed a diverse, contentious society to function.
A Call for Institutional Adulthood
This is not a call for silence. It’s a call for seriousness.
A republic requires citizens who vote thoughtfully, leaders who govern responsibly, courts that interpret rather than invent, and a culture that values competence over catharsis.
Noise is easy. Outrage is cheap. Governance is hard.
If we want institutions that protect liberty, produce stability, and reward effort rather than grievance, we must reclaim the original premise of the system: elect wisely, then allow leadership to lead within the law.
That is not nostalgia. It is constitutional realism.
And until we return to it, we should not be surprised by the dysfunction we continue to experience.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey D. Cohen, ESQ
A hard-working lawyer and proud homeowner.
The Law Offices of Jeffrey D. Cohen — We Stand By You.
Call my office today, at (718) 275-5900 for a free 20-minute consultation.
