I admit my view is somewhat cynical, but I feel compelled to ask: what has this "national conversation" achieved? Can you draw direct relationships between a choice between two actual candidates and how your change of vote affected anything related to police training? I ask this not to hear about hypotheticals or idealisms, but because the one instance of actual widespread law enforcement brutality that I have familiarity with (Brazil's military dictatorship years) only came to an end because of special circumstances surrounding specific political connections at the time, not because of any direct participation of the populace (in fact as part of the transition back to democracy, there was even a "compromise" amnesty law that shielded perpetrators of torture from charges).

I've read on numerous occasions how the US flavor of democracy is similarly not actually all that representative of the opinion of the masses (honestly, I have a hard time believing in any claim that the same political environment that passed Texas' recent abortion laws is a high functioning democracy).

I maintain my utilitarian position that reading about something in the news and talking about hypothetical candidates on some tech forum is nowhere near the same level of civic engagement as actually getting involved directly.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with reading news and not engaging in civics as a reaction, but the comment that prompted this discussion was about the relationship between reacting to news and the bigger picture for each person individually, and I think that identifying when time is being wasted is a pretty good start towards redirecting energy to activities that one considers important. </two-cents>