No. There are a bunch of billionaires pushing their various agendas. Billionaire pet-causes is pretty much the only way things change in this country anymore. Democracy is dead, all we have left is billionaires fighting each other.
The one tool we can wield in this information or rather misinformation age is critical thinking. I no longer follow any pundit. I have nowhere near their knowledge in their respective fields, but I can think and ponder whether their views make sense. Robert Reich, Krugman, Brooks, Shields, Shapiro or whomever. See what slant they are coming from, try to understand if they make sense. Immediately afterwards, read about the same topic from someone on the opposite side of the spectrum. Don't get lost in the doomsday world is ending, other side is evil BS. Then hold an opinion, but don't stick to it. Allow it to be malleable and change and try arguing from the other side constantly. I feel like our own ego is partly what let's us join each tribe of thought and we further reinforce it from reading similar viewpoints because we want to be good and right. Sounds simple, but it's so easy to get caught up in it without taking a step back and just thinking about that thought process.
So, that's how you keep democracy alive. Not through simple education where you reiterate facts, memorize or follow directions, but through improving critical thinking which is slowly worsening in college and high schools. In a conversation with a classmate, we reminisced how in 3rd grade we learned how to spot bias in news articles, practicing for months. I feel like that's disappeared too.
A good example of this is the current tax debate. Republicans claim lowering taxes is a great way to "jump-start" the economy. But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade, you realize that it's a terrible idea.
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-t...
But then there are other states, like Florida IIRC, who have also been running that experiment and succeeding. So then the key is to see why one works and the other doesn't.
Succeeding by what measure?
As an individual it seems great to go work there as opposed to here in CA because there is no state income tax, yet I still make way more money here in CA because there is practically no industry in FL unless you're a lawyer or a doctor.
[0] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454640/north-carolina-...
According to the article the TPA's (and by extension the Koch's) campaign failed and the KentuckyWired project got the go ahead. Better funded, more powerful opposition lost a merits-based argument and did not get their way. This is an example of democracy working, wouldn't you say?
Once issues stop getting public attention they try again and usually succeed.
https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9...
They might try again, but then they might lose again. No need to give in to cynicism and apathy just yet.
But what happened this year? ISPs can sell your web history. Now they got net neutrality provisions revoked.
They lost a battle, but they are winning the war.
I'd love to one day see a US presidential candidate hand out flyers on Times Square.
I'd like to see less money in politics, either public funding or donations restricted to small individual donors, and I personally think a good candidate for higher office should have worked at least one shit job in their life. But the other extreme is equally absurd.
The President is literally the chief executive of an organization of millions of people. While some good old fashioned down-to-earth-ness is great for knowing what to do, if a Presidential candidate can't manage a large organization efficiently, pick competent subordinates and delegate authority effectively, they ain't never gonna get anything done as President.
The President is like the one race where a two year PR stint managing a few thousand people spread across all fifty states and a few territories is a good interview for the job.
History is more of a battle between the haves and the haves than between the haves and the have-nots.
The Koch brothers alone were planning on spending nearly $1 billion to influence the election. It's no wonder that congress is racing to pass an historically unpopular tax bill that almost exclusively benefits these very same donors. Hell, Lindsey Graham gave away the game in a response a few weeks ago when asked what would happen if they didn't pass the bill:
> "The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, the financial contributions will stop, other than that it'll be fine!"
The US imposed a military coup on Guatemala which overthrew a democratically elected government and installed a right-wing military junta in its place, after which the military ruled via a succession of corrupt dictators and military puppets, and undertook a horrific genocidal decades-long civil war against armed rebels and rural peasant civilians.
But I don’t think that’s quite the same situation as the Koch Brothers today. For one thing, all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners.
What about all the American fruit farmers that compete with bananas? There's always side-effects. Now Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined.
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/last-minute-real-es...
Are you from the US? If so your comment reads like you have Stockholm syndrome.