@Gustodon @micchiato I've got some thoughts about this. I'd point to both the Greens and the DSA as groups that are genuinely loaded with concrete ideas for making things better. However, both groups are blocked by our deeply broken system.

This breakage that exists to keep the red and blue teams in power is what makes people want to look to revolution - even violent revolution - for an answer, because it's frustrating seing nothing change. The blue team, if they come back into power, wants to go back to what we had. That path has a bad end for everyone, even if it's a slower path to Hell than the red path, which runs towards our self-destruction gleefully.

But there are some problems with revolution that make it a bad bet.

Let's look at the most relevant, visible example of violent revolution - the American Revolution. If we fast-forwarded a thousand years and looked at the highlight reel, the American Revolution will probably be remembered for giving us the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and consequent annihilation of the civilian populations there, more than a century of violent regime change in the name of Capitalism, and probably the history books will cap us off with Trump.

The French Revolution started off with a bang - read about the Reign of Terror, and then check out the consistent (until recently) support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

How the collapse of the Soviet Union will be recorded probably depends on whether they can ditch Putin.

If we succumb to the temptation to conduct a violent revolution, even if it succeeds we won't likely have anything measurably different from or better than what we've got now.

Happily, rather than just saying we're doomed, I'm here to offer a better way.

Many (or most?) states have mechanisms for ballot initiatives, and for many (or most?) states, those supercede the legislative process. They are the will of the people.

What we can do is use ballot initiatives to force change. The most productive change I think we can force is to institute ranked choice voting everywhere. It might not be perfect, but it's worlds better than the two-party deathgrip we're in now. A great recent example of what RCV gives us is Zohran Mamdami.

If that seems like it's going to be tough to do - it is! And the reason it's tough is because we have to overcome the root cause of ALL the issues we're facing. We need to reach our fellow citizens and convince them to act ; convince them they *can* act and that it *will* make a difference, and that things *can* be better.

We have big issues to resolve, like the existence of billionaires and the capitalist system that allows them to exist. We need to repair our standing in the global community, and become the nation we all know we can be if we really try. We need to institute a real social safety net and take care of people, and throw off the brainwashing of the oligarchy that has us pointing at each other instead of pointing up at the oligarchs who are hoarding all the cookies.

We can do this, but the only sustainable outcome comes from our reaching each other and moving together. And that will be hard. But it's what we have to do if we really want to do BETTER than what we've accomplished so far. I'm not aware of a single nation on Earth that does things right, but if we pour our lives into it, we can become a model for a healthy representative democracy with social welfare and the good of the people at its heart.