This is super naive thinking that ignores real huge issues in USA around inequality.

I think the complaints about Trump's 2016 campaign are that:

1. There's an important difference between Americans spending money to influence an American election and Russians (secretly) spending money to influence an American election. (Alternatively/additionally, Russia hacked computers and used that illegally obtained data to influence the American election).

2. When targeting ads, there's a difference between using data that voters willingly give your campaign and data that was disingenuously collected about people (e.g. Cambridge Analytica's infamous "5,000 data points on every American"[0]).

The extent to which either of these things happened is subject to debate, as is the extent to which either of them changed the outcome of the election.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-rea...

Not a defense of Trump supporters here, but do we know how many were edited out that intelligently spoke on issues to form the Triumph bit? Without that, you can't really make any determinations. On top of that, the sample size is likely very small.

Replace XYZ with EU, Brexit, Biden, Trump, and in the UK: Boris Johnson, and Jeremey Corbyn.

> Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters.

It's a stretch to speak in complete absolutes here.

Colbert has built a career upon exaggerating and editorializing politics. He is an entertainer and comedian, not an analyst. He is hardly a sound source for any real political insight.

> The "issues" are whatever you can use to trigger an emotional response from someone who is easily manipulated.

I think the same can be said about both political ideologies in the US. Emotional issues are far easier to get worked up about, even if there is no easy solution to the "issue" at hand.

To claim only 51% of the country falls into this category, and to imply it's only one political ideology, is disingenuous at best. Particularly when you lead your post with something a comedian said on a late night TV show, ie. the very same emotional appeal you rail against.

Definitely. So much this, that I wonder if "both" is even the right word? So much sound and fury, and somehow Congress votes nearly unanimously to give rich people trillions in response to a pandemic, while doing nothing about health care. Somehow we're spending $750B on the military every year, more than the next fifteen nations combined, with our increase this year dwarfing Russia's total spending. Somehow in the coming election we have a confused loudmouth old man from the urban northeast who likes draft deferments, non-consensual digital penetration, and criminal-panic race baiting, running against Trump.

In an ideal scenario, you'd know who your state senators are, and your district representative, and when it comes to matters of federal government you go straight to them and then they vote on your behalf.

This of course means even more importantly you should know your state representatives, mayor, etc. and be active in the politics of your own community.

But instead we're lazy so we just want the president to be a dictator instead of safeguarding our republic.

Funny. I wrote my senator months ago about that encryption bill going around then. Just got a canned response back today, about how law enforcement should be able to access encrypted nformation, etc.

Poetically waxing about the effects of "writing your reps" is bullshit when they are entrenched with one another and, as you said, most Americans don't care enough to do it.

Maybe a better solution would be for the US to balkanize and allow localization to be more effective. Maybe a national identity more akin to the diverse regions of the US would be more like what you're describing.

I think a part of this is that many of the issues that are important to techies are either unimportant to most voters, or the voters don't understand them enough for form a good opinion. When an representative is representing hundreds of thousands of people, it's not really surprising that they ignore feedback on issues that most people don't care about.

Balkanization might help, but many states have been doing the exact opposite of that for the last 200 years because there's a lot of benefit to having a common set of laws and unregulated trade & travel over a large region.

So give up then? Idk what you want me to tell you. I'd rather people just not even complain about anything if they're so disillusioned with the government that they think they are powerless, why even care about any problems at all?

> Maybe a better solution would be for the US to balkanize and allow localization to be more effective. Maybe a national identity more akin to the diverse regions of the US would be more like what you're describing.

I don't disagree, actually. Local government governs best. You'll see largely the most successful governments are have smaller populations, often times more homogenous (not necessarily race, but more so culture), and I'm not sure if it's a factor but I believe population density plays a role.

?

"The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules conquering Captures on Land and Water;" -- US Constitution, Article I, 8.11

The workaround, for at least fifty years, has simply been for the President to start a war without going through the formality of declaring one.

Congress could probably put a stop to it after the fact. We don't know this for sure, because thus far they just rubber-stamp it. Military-industrial money flows into everyone's district, by design.