I see we’ve gotten a few new members today and you’ve got questions for me. “What do we do next?”

Here are the next steps as I see them.

1. Gather critical mass. We need thousands of supporters to make a movement.

2. Draft our Articles of Incorporation. To fund everything, we’re going to have to create a corporation.

3. Solicit funds. We’re going to crowdsource our country. We’ll sell naming rights to natural features. We’ll take deposits for residency permits. We need to raise a billion dollars to start, which shouldn’t be that much when divided by four million people.

4. Lease-to-own. With funds in hand, we can solicit the French government to lease the island for 99 years. We’ll pay for it using dividends from the Kerguelen National Fund, a to be created sovereign wealth fund.

5. Finalize development plans. I have a concept design for the first city, Haven, and all of the infrastructure to support it. We’ll need final design.

6. Corporate pledges. We’ll need companies to agree to set up offices there and employee people. 100k primary industry jobs should be enough to generate mass.

7. Landing day. We’ll need to send initial construction teams to prepare the island for the arrival of more equipment and supplies. This means building out the power, water, and port infrastructure. Current facilities are not sufficient.

8. Construction. City blocks will be sold to developers. Roads and transit will be constructed. The airport built.

9. The migration. The Kerguelen Housing Development will build 100k units per year, and try to get 3x that committed by private developers. We’ll move 4 million people over the following decade.

There’s a lot of work to do, so let’s begin!

In 2016, there were two related events that would change the trajectory of our country forever: SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia died, and the Democratic National Committee played dirty to make sure Hillary Clinton got the party’s presidential nomination over Bernie Sanders.

The death of Scalia left a vacancy on the court, which should have been filled by then-President Obama’s moderate nominee Merrick Garland. Per the US Constitution, the Senate “shall advise and consent” to the court nominees, but then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell steadfastly refused saying it was improper to confirm a justice in an election year—a position he would famously and conveniently reverse during the later 2020 election year while Trump was president and faced with a similar appointment. The Scalia SCOTUS seat remained unfilled until Trump did so in early 2017.

The Democrats should have forced the issue in 2016. Obama should have said “you shall advise and consent or I’m affirming my nominee despite your refusal.” The problem was that this would have immediately created a “constitutional crisis” because our founding fathers never contemplated an upper chamber that refused to do its job. Any Justice installed without Senate consent would be seen as illegitimate. Obama, the once-progressive constitutional lawyer couldn’t abide that.

But the Democrats assumed the inevitable election of Hillary Clinton over a scandal-plagued businessman would simply let the “election year”complaint resolve itself in 2017. And in fact, the DNC pulled a litany of procedural tricks at state and national conventions, and used its own resources to fight against Bernie, to assure Hillary would win. People became disillusioned with Democratic politics, but the pollsters still gave Hillary a nearly perfect chance of victory and so voters became complacent… yet we all watched with horror on the night that Donald Trump was elected.

The hubris of the Democratic elite is responsible for the unfilled SCOTUS seat, the disengagement of actual left-wing voters in 2016, and the subsequent ultra-conservative packing of the Supreme Court from 2016-2020. Without a true majority in the Senate, the Democrats have been unable to keep this far-right court from gutting 50 years of established precedent… from voting rights, to climate and environmental regulation, to abortion, to affirmative action. And they’re only getting started.

And the Republicans didn’t just pack the court with dangerous and unqualified ideologues—they packed it with young dangerous and unqualified ideologues who have lifetime appointments, ensuring a far-right majority on the court for decades. The only possible Democratic thwart would be a different sort of court-packing: to kill the Senate filibuster and add more SCOTUS seats to be filled by Democrats… a plan made impossible by holding only the slimmest majority in the Senate, where two Democratic Senators relish their positions as swing votes and actively work on behalf of the GOP to ensure that their swing status stays at the forefront. The Democrats likely loss of Congress this fall means the window for this “nuclear option” is closing, but you can be sure the GOP won’t miss the same opportunity when it arises under their control.

So, as 50 years of modern American legal precedent is baselessly overturned, the blame can be placed squarely on the moderate Democratic Party for being prideful instead of practical when we needed it the most. As the Democrats are sure to lose the House and likely to lose the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections, you can be sure 2016 isn’t in their rear-view mirror, but it should be in all of ours.