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.
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"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.
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.