The people who led us into this mess will not lead us out of it.

The business minds who fought for endless tax cuts and thereby starved our schools will not fix our schools.

The food and beverage companies that profited from making us unhealthy will not heal us with smaller cans and the addition of salads.

The Democrats who went along with every major Republican effort to cut back the state and free companies to "do them" will not fix the safety net.

The political donors who ordered up bottle-service public policy that benefited them and hurt the public will not save us with their philanthropy.

The Silicon Valley man-boys who inverted their own social obtuseness and isolation into messianic, monopolistic power grabbing will not redeem themselves by ending diseases.

The Wall Street financiers who spared no opportunity to rewrite the rules of American capitalism to benefit them and mostly them will not fight inequity through the tool of impact investing.

The plutocrats who flew to Aspen and Davos to talk of solving our biggest shared problems, having flown in from causing them, will not solve them.

The Thought Leaders who carefully scripted ideas that acknowledged our gathering crises but stayed clear of proposing systemic fixes to them will not think us out of this mega-crisis.

The Kochs and Murdochs and other right-wing oligarchs who were happy to run America into the ground if it meant higher profits will not repair the society they have defrauded through late-in-life charitable projects pushing unity.

The bankers who pushed energy companies to cut every possible corner to make as much money as possible will not save us from climate change as board members or came-to-Jesus CEOs of green advocacy groups.

The social-media billionaire who made some of his fortune by enabling white supremacy and fascism to run free on his platform will not heal our divides by donating to immigrants-rights groups.

We will not be saved by the mentalities, the people, the kinds of leaders, the business logics, the mantras, the cultural touchstones, the books, the lodestars, the Thought Leaders, the conferences, the corporations, the capitulators that got us into this mess.

Our bitter racist past and present will not be repaired by companies putting on corporate blackface while refusing to hire more Black people, to pay Black people more, to stop avoiding the taxes to fund the common institutions that serve Black people and all people.

This here is a health crisis. An economic crisis. A racial crisis. A democratic crisis. And a climate crisis.

If there's a silver lining to this madness, it is this: It is clearer than ever who will not save us. And clearer than ever that we must save ourselves.

Democratically.

"To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it." Happy Fourth!