[zanny]

If you don't have faith in your government, you need to fix your government. Nothing else in society can be healthy or long term stable if you are operating under a fundamental distrust of the exclusive wielder of violent force. Its fundamental.

Going into an election season its valuable to remember. Housing, healthcare, the military industrial complex, infrastructure, bribery, corruption, undemocratic elections, polarization, etc are all fundamentally a product of flawed government. Its not just a "get money out of politics" flawed, its a fix elections to be representative and equitable, make representatives accountable, make everyone matter and have equal influence. Because contemporary American government is hugely against all these points.

Its a super hard problem of course, but it is the problem to solve first - nothing else is going to get much better while things are very likely to get worse so long as the disconnect between having an educated rational electorate whom are fairly and justly represented by elected officials accountable to them isn't the general state of affairs.

[UnpossibleJim]

I have no problem fixing government, but it has been shown time and time again that the biggest bag for your vote is to vote is local elections. Making your voice heard on the local government level can and will have more of an effect, with less influence (on average) by corporate monies than at any other point in the political process. The focus has continuously been swayed to a larger, more centralized power stricter with a greater disconnect that seems to be less interested in "getting to know" for lack of a better phrase, it's constituency. It's a matter of scale. Local governments, by their nature, are going to be more interested in their local constituency. They, then will come together to answer to a larger, managing power. At least, that's the theory. Ceding these self interested small government bodies to large monoliths seems like a step backwards. Even when thinking about it from a program architecture standpoint, it seems like going back to the 70's style of monolithic services instead of the modern approach.