Change never happened because someone spouted a couple damning facts and shamed people with power.
We're in the sh*tshow we are today not because of a lack of ideologies: Libertarian, Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, Evangelical, Green, and on and on... So clearly, there's no lack of 'convincing ideology' for any single individual's belief system and ideals.
The problem as I see it, is that the majority of people have retreated into their ideologies and just started tossing grenades and stones behind their respective walls, rather than having dialogue, understanding, and compromising.
And if your counter is that we're just lacking an even BETTEREST ideology that somehow rules them all, I think that's fallacy. Ideology is neither the solution, nor the problem.
It's the fact that ideologies have become ending points, rather than starting points of discussion. Which leads me back to my original point that we need leaders who will govern by listening to ideas, facts, counterpoints, and making tough compromises and decisions based on that.
EDIT: spelling
What we need is systems themselves that take human nature into mind. The founding fathers of the US set out to create this exact sort of system. And they really did. Lacking a super majority, literally a single senator can prevent a political appointment. So on this issue, if the senate really did not want to put into appointee into the FCC who was in favor of dismantling net neutrality - they had that power. When Pai was appointed by Obama in 2012 his views were no secret. The senate could have said no. McConnell could have proposed a new person, Obama formally nominates him, and again the senate could reject. They are under 0 obligation to approve any nominee - ever.
Yes, this would be incredibly dysfunctional - but that is precisely how the US government was envisioned. The whole checks and balances thing we learn about in elementary social studies is specifically about preventing something from happening unless there is mass consensus. The founding fathers did not want a huge, powerful democratic government - they wanted a small accountable republic driven to progress only on issues where there was minimal to no opposition.
You can even see this in things like the bill of rights. The bill of rights does not, for instance, guarantee you the right to free speech. It says you already inherently have that right - it is inalienable. The bill of rights does not grant you a right - it prevents the government from infringing on your natural rights. In other words the view is that governments cannot grant rights, but they can take them away. A dysfunctional government maximizes the freedom of the people by preventing the infringement of such freedom except in cases such that there is a mass consensus of its merit.
The problem is that the doomsday scenario of all of congress falling into one clique happened. Politicians all need money to get elected and stay in office. Corporate donors (and influence) is where that money comes from. And this is where I think the problem is. But I also don't think there's any solution to it. Imagine you take all money out of political campaigns. That don't stop already famous individuals from running for office and their advantage in these cases would be monumental. There are radical ideas like treating political duty the same as jury duty, but I'm unsure how well that would be publicly received.
The point here is that I don't think 'just get better politicians' is something that's necessarily workable in the longrun. We need to create systems that readily accept the realities of corruption, cronyism, and general pettiness -- but then operate in a publicly desirable way regardless of this.
I'm not saying I necessarily disagree that "a small accountable republic driven to progress only on issues where there was minimal to no opposition" is desirable today, but you have put forward no valid argument for it.
For instance: they foresaw the problems powerful interests acting in bad faith could cause, and so we now enjoy judicial recourse when politicians or appointees make arbitrary, capricious, or corrupt decisions. The fact that we're discussing legal challenges to the FCC's decision as even a possibility underscores this point.
We understand more about human psychology / neurobiology now, of course, so this is one limitation of uncritically accepting their advice. We also have the benefit of over two centuries of additional hindsight. Still, I think there is good reason to at least consider the opinions of people who would, by any reasonable reckoning, count as political systems design experts of their time.
Many countries such as the UK have legally enforceable limits to the amounts parties can spend on elections. This helps, the UK government is not totally in the packet of big business. The only celebratory I can think of having been elected is Glenda Jackson. Of course big business still owns most of the "popular press".
How about we make these people complete a PhD in three different fields. After that, they will be humbled enough to be fit for politics. (Of course, experimentation needed for validation of this claim; anecdotal: Merkel has a PhD and she did pretty well so far).
Going back to such a system would require incredible tolerance on both "conservative" and "progressive" sides. We would have to accept that within one nation there would be other states regulated in highly different fashions than our own.
Good luck raising billions of dollars or marshaling millions of volunteer hours to elect candidates that may or may not follow through on promises on any given issue. Where are these wise leaders going to come from that they're immune to the vagaries of party politics and voting blocs?
If people can't (or won't) critically evaluate claims, and vote, then how can we expect the system to work in their favor?
Take Trump as an example of that latter point: I had friends who believed that because he was a businessman he would be able to run the country better than Hillary. They assumed this was true, and even when presented with his poor performance in that role they didn't yield. I didn't even receive a counter-argument. The conversation ended.
As a side note: we already raise billions of dollars every year in the form of taxes.
Once in a long while citizens clean house. Major parties dissolve, etc, and fresh leadership emerges. This will happen again once rank-and-file on the left and right begin to find consensus on some key issues like diminishing freedoms, privacy, and corrupt leadership.
It's my opinion that ideology gives one tunnel vision and shouldn't be encouraged. There are things we can ALL be pissed about, let's talk about those things. Above all, we should agree that "incumbency" and "party affiliation" are nasty things.
By being passive and blindly listening to your party's claims -- in this case Republicans and Democrats mainly -- you have conceded your power to extremist groups (see gun control, extreme right, racists), corruption (anything to do with lobbying in the U.S. (in other parts of the world it would be called legalized corruption)) and politicians passing last minute illegible bills to laws. If you have under 20% turnover something is ridiculously wrong with the system.
Kid yourself not. It is your choice. You have the obligation as a citizen in a democracy to pay attention, vote and yes put your foot down when they feed you bullshit, like the FCC report. Otherwise, you are being ruled, you have conceded your power and it is democracy only in name. Thus I think this must be a wake up call -- see how many people on e.g. Twitter accepted this deregulation as totally ok and for "our own good". How many people know about title I and II classification? Or why FCC was forced in 2015 to finally classify ISPs as title II? Search what happened in 2005 here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S... . It is not like ISPs are playing nicely or care about our rights. And us accepting their blatant lies and this farce is the defeat of the day.
The worst thing is you teach the next generation of voters that this is ok and natural. It is not.
And you are lowering the bar by saying "oh it is Republicans they can do that." No -- if Republicans followed their advertised mantra to the letter they should be totally against this deregulation. Don't lower the bar of what you are demanding from your representatives. If you care for your country and your life stay informed.
I genuinely challenge you to come up with a form of civic protest that solves a problem, then commit to solving it. Big or small; doesn't matter. Just get out there and do something.
(Disclaimer: I've never voted and don't plan on it, but I spend much of my free time attempting to fix some niggling problems at local and state levels)