How I Wrote "The American Experiment"

The behind-the-scenes journey, and why it took six years to hit publish.

I wrote this the night before July 4, just hours before publishing The American Experiment — an essay I’d carried for years but was too afraid to finish.

I've been sitting on some version of it since 2019, but the fragments go back even further.

In 2016, I was 33, back in community college. First day of psych class, the professor walks in and immediately …