Since ancient Athens, democracy has not worked very well: how to disengage democracy from oligarchy and imperialism, and how to engage people in self-government and community? The modern era inherited this problem as it imitated Athens, and 19th century political theory recycled this question in a negative dialectic between imperial capitalism and nationalistic socialism. Since the Cold War, no progress has been made to cut the Gordian knot.  Lacking any substantively different way forward, modern political discourse is stuck in a sterile dialectic between two false options. Like the Romans, contemporary Americans are turning away from political questions and embracing culture war. A change not merely of values, but of knowledge itself, within democracy, is needed; Community Choice Aggregation was put forward as a way out of this ancient intellectual trap - an attempt to give people the opportunity to be responsible for their needs - by giving them control over energy. The many crises of modernity - endless war, species extinction, nuclear weapons proliferation, drug addiction, mass displacement, mass illiteracy, suicide, corruption, and the like - are all attributable to a common ephiphenomenon - the Enlightenment spinning out of control, and technology out from under democracy. CCA is a foundation upon which to embrace politics through local redefinition of "economics."