[ocschwar]

Part of the lack of democracy in the USA is the "Bowling Alone" problem: too much of the citizenry has no experience interacting with a democratic process. And part of THAT is the experience of losing a committee vote and moving on.

[jessaustin]

A democratic process would have to exist in order for us to "interact with" it (what would that even mean? if democracy is somehow separate from the people it isn't democracy). Citizens lose every vote. Rich assholes win every vote. A majority of citizens would never freely and informedly choose to fight multiple pointless wars of aggression on the other side of the planet. A majority of citizens would never freely and informedly imprison more fellow citizens, both in absolute and percentage terms, than any other nation on the planet, in history. A majority of citizens would never freely and informedly pay a Chinese lab to invent a global pandemic, and then enrich whichever pharma firms can best pretend to develop "vaccines" (which in actuality are more like pre-therapeutics, in that while they make infection less deadly they don't actually slow the spread of the virus) for that pandemic. All of these follies are the broken-window fallacy writ large, with the glaziers plowing most of their ill-gotten rents back into the political process to break more windows.

I'm glad I can't understand why so many prefer to blame we the people rather than the system of control to which we are subject. Perhaps they are also subject...

[ocschwar]

School boards and city councils are part of the democratic process, and they are open to you in your jurisdiction. You just have to face the prospect of your wishes being overruled for lack of support. That is part and parcel of living in a democratic society.

[jessaustin]

I don't live in a jurisdiction that has a city council. Is there something the local school board can do about the issues mentioned above? I had previously been pretty happy with their performance, but if they've been getting us in all these stupid wars then I have some complaints!

You seem determined to dismiss global concerns with quite specific imaginings of my apparently dysfunctional political participation. I don't actually care that much about democracy, per se. The concept is usually a red herring, cf. your contributions ITT. I just want to stop participating in a system that kills millions of innocents.