The French have more of a social safety net, which enables extended protests. I understand the irony in stating this (well then, USian, get off your ass and demand a social safety net), but the chicken-and-egg problem is real. This is setting aside cultural mores and biases; for an example thereof, see sibling comment.
To get the basics of welfare the US has now, it took 25% of the country being unemployed,, everyone seeing their hard working grandparents dying in the ditch at the end of their life with nothing, and constant bread lines everywhere.
Oh, and massive organization of voters and rabid progressive populist support.
President Trump, above all, is the clearest and most direct example of how you absolutely can get what you vote for in the US. Republicans did not want Trump and fought it as much as they could. They openly declared how bad he was and how stupid and how awful he would be, and it didn't matter. Because people voted.
Donald Trump is in flagrant violation of constitutional law constantly, again, and it doesn't matter because voters want it.
He should be in prison but it doesn't matter because voters wanted him, wanted his bullshit, and voted against anyone who got in their way.
And yet, losers will STILL insist that "voting doesn't matter" or "Blah blah money in politics"
> Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French.
Sir, I'm fleeing this country. The time to protest was 30 years ago. Or 70 years ago. Either way, it is well in the past. This country will need to crash and detox from its addiction to money before it can become a real democracy.
The Citizens United decision virtually ensures that the average voter, even in aggregate, has nothing important to say. Shortly, one particular U.S. citizen will have a net worth of $1T; and this, more than anything will ensure that “We the People” are only noise, compared to the real signal.
That is a problem, but the larger problem is people don't have an informed vote. They vote for a party straight down without considering what they really support, or what the unintended consequences of those things are.
The other half of this is there is so little choice that a voter does have. On the national level it's just over one bit of information per year. Over 12 years - 3 presidential races, 6 congressional reps, 4 senators. I'm not counting primaries because while they can shape policy, they can just as well unshape policy from people voting strategically ("electable"). And a voter can only vote in half of the primaries, so primaries are already part of the dynamic ushering people into these packaged sports teams of the major parties.
In addition to the obvious fixes like Ranked Pairs voting, I'd say we need a Constitutional amendment bringing back independent agencies with their heads being directly elected rather than merely picked by whomever wins the presidential race. For example you shouldn't have to balance your guess of how you think one president will treat the ATF vs the NSF. Or the President shouldn't have any power over the Attorney General, as it's the Attorney General who should be prosecuting a criminal President, rather than merely being a lapdog in the criminal conspiracy. A race for each agency would also create focus on each agency head's actual results, rather than how the current guy is using a round-robin of all these different departments to create a tough-looking spectacle in one area, only to move on to another one when the actual results start becoming apparent.
We also need the right to recall for all national politicians, for obvious reasons.
The representative system in the US is all but dead when it comes to high-power politics, this second Trump presidency has vigorously shown that. They weren't of that much use before, also, apart from blocking a few essential things here and there. They're also not at the Caligula's horse in the Senate moment, but they're rapidly going that way.
As a Canadian watching from a distance the fact that the administration and its congressional allies etc don't seem to be concerned at all about what is going to happen in November gives me a lot of apprehension about what they might know that is not being stated publicly.
Midterms coming up and prosecuting an endless "war" that doubles gas prices, and not seeming concerned at all about the blowback?
Once you accept that Trump is literally senile, a lot of things click into place. Why does he seem unable to predict obvious consequences of the actions he takes? Why does he fixate on random mean words and repeat them with no regard for normal political strategy? Why does he randomly fall asleep on camera?
When he says that he has no reason to worry because the polls show everyone loves him, I think he genuinely believes that.
Bessent is really smart? It’s possible he may be; but he communicates so poorly, that unless you knew anything of his background (I do not.) then it would be hard to assess. If he understands anything about monetary policy, apart from personal enrichment - which of course is a given in this administration, one couldn’t discern that from his public utterances.
They correctly understand that a boss who randomly assigns them new shoes (https://archive.is/2Z4qS) is too far gone and will not reward them for bringing attention to political issues he thinks are fake news. I'm sure Bessent is already planning his tell-all memoir about how he worked hard behind the scenes against the scheming viziers who were causing all the problems.
To some extent those people have all been vastly enriching themselves with insider trading. They're going to be getting pardons as well. What's the worst that will probably happen to them, they retire to some country with their new fortunes?
When you figure out how to leverage a vote to get something, let me know. Last time I tried this I was screamed at for electing a fascist for withholding it.
You will be screamed at no matter what you do. So don't let that get in your way. It is important to vote. Remember when people are screaming that at least you're sending a message because votes even for third parties are counted and when third parties start to get a lot of attention that does change what the major parties do. So don't worry about so-called wasted votes. They're never wasted. Sometimes you don't have a good option, but you can pick the best option you have.
Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French.