The people who fund the political parties control what happens. Elected officials do their bidding. The public front of "democracy" is just there to keep everyone else from realizing that.

This sinister & pervasive line of thought terrifies me. Too many Americans under 40 share similar thoughts: my vote doesn't count, some mysterious corporate/billionaire $$ controls everything so why bother, antipathy etc.

It's scary that many actually believe this and thus self-fulfill their prophecy because they don't get involved and don't vote.

To further amplify this detrimental affect, there are state-sponsored trolls/propagandists actively driving this wedge and these narratives online to attack our Democracy from within.

Don't mistake my seeing things for how they are as apathy. That's a false equivalence. I absolutely support getting out and participating in the political process, but it's important to understand just how much of what happens is completely out of our control because how else do we fix that? The act of noticing and speaking of this is not the same as the act of giving up.

Also, my responses were a reality check in the face of the propaganda you're speaking of. The "the US is the most free and moral country!" folks are getting a much bigger dose of force-fed freedom than anybody else.

Lying to yourself for the greater good?

I've been involved. Will continue to be. It's still the truth.

Ask yourself, how come when America's chief global rival does bad things, it's cause for condemnation, but America must be protected from criticism?

Nobody cares about Yemen but everyone is very sure Hezbollah are bad guys?

Our system of control is so much more effective than state censorship. And the trains don't even run on time.

A majority of the people didn't even vote for the president.

Can they, though? We've got the test case in front of our face right now. Want to place some bets on anybody elected being removed before 2020?

How much you want to bet that in 2020, for the umpteenth time in a row, we get a choice between two billion-dollar-funded candidates who are absolutely not going to buck their sponsors, ever? Taste the freedom.

We had one with Nixon. He resigned, remember? Now just because we don’t get it again, does not mean there’s no basis for OP’s notion that we can remove legislators all the way up to the executive branch.

Fish don't know they're in water. https://sivers.org/fish

The fact that we have the illusion of choice between candidates who will all do mostly the same things, and won't affect the bureaucracy that much anyways, doesn't make us meaningfully more free.

"But my candidate had a great take on the bathroom bill controversy!", as we continue bombing weddings in afghanistan, imprisoning more people than China (!!!), etc..