[pembrook]

Any democratic government is simply a body elected to represent the wishes of the people.

If the government isn't righting its wrongs, it's because you (not necessarily you specifically, but "the people" as a whole) have explicitly put in power the people who are doing the bad things.

This is everybody's fault. Yours included. We all enabled this to happen.

That's the beauty of a democratic system. It clarifies and cuts through to the core of our culture. Americans fear the idea of foreign terrorists more than we fear privacy encroachment, and thus, we were delivered the results of that belief.

The system worked! It represented our wishes perfectly. The problem isn't "them" (the government). It's us.

[akiselev]

That may have been true for Americans living two hundred years ago when constituents voted for the people who birthed the two party system, but it certainly isn't today. Gerrymandering of House districts, the limit on the number of Representatives, the nature of the Senate in our bicameral legislature, and the electoral college all guarantee that some votes will count significantly more than others. That's not a democracy, it's a facade that replaced democracy a long time ago (and one could argue was never a democracy to begin with, since many people alive today gained the right to vote in living memory).

[godelski]

There's two options when your government isn't doing what you (read "the people") want them to do:

1) Vote them out

2) Revolution

I'm rather a firm believer that option 1 is still on the table and we don't have to resort to likely bloody methods. But in either case it is up to the people in the end. I am not convinced that there's been coalitions formed to actually do #1. I'm not actually convinced most people are upset, even though I think they should be.

[ddingus]

Yes, it is a mess.

Still on us though. Unless we want to see the nation invaded, there really is no one else with standing to address the growing problem.

A class level action is needed. When things reach clearly, can't miss it, can't live with it levels of unacceptable, we may see that happen.

Or, maybe we see just enough placating and theatre to trundle along for decades.

Last time we moved like that, it was the 30's.

People struck the crap out of basically everyone, handing FDR position to go and get the New Deal done. Those strikes and actions were illegal and legal. A whole class in high solidarity acting right out.

His follow on was never seriously discussed and in the decades since, we have seen many moves to prevent a similar scenario from happening again.

What we do not know is whether that history can be repeated.

The response today might just be brutal.

It is all terribly expensive either way too.

[agensaequivocum]

We are not a democracy nor were we supposed to be.

[dane-pgp]

To potentially explain the views of the people down-voting you, consider these articles explaining a common misconception:

https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democra...

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-11/is-u-s...

https://thebaffler.com/latest/were-a-republic-not-a-democrac...

[agensaequivocum]

They are clearly reading Federalist 10 out of context. He clearly says, among other things, there is a mean between to little representation vs to much.

> It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects.

A democracy doesn't have representation. So while his definition maybe different than what we tend to understand today, neither is he arguing that "republic" is the same as what we mean by "democracy" today.