The root of the problem, if you ask me, is the apathy of the people.
I don't know if it's just apathy, some people are apathetic and just go about their days.
I think there is a combination of things that causes a very major problem, maybe all of them purposely caused to end up this way:
1) The US was not intended to be a direct democracy. We were supposed to vote on people based on their capabilities to make smart decisions for us. Hence the house of representatives, hence electors who were supposed to get together and vote for a president. We weren't supposed to vote for a) representatives that agree with our political views, nor b) electors who are bound to vote for who we personally think is best.
In these ways we have short-circuted our representative democracy in to somewhat a messy form of direct democracy.
Unfortunately: 2) The people are ill-informed. A democracy is only as good a system as the people voting in it. Our media is doing a terrible job making people informed. Much of it is for-profit, taking stories from PR firms that are payed to get the population to think a certain thing and vote a certain way.
These two things combined means that we vote in terrible people and get terrible results. The people who control the message make a lot of money.
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I don't know if it's just apathy, some people are apathetic and just go about their days.
I think there is a combination of things that causes a very major problem, maybe all of them purposely caused to end up this way:
1) The US was not intended to be a direct democracy. We were supposed to vote on people based on their capabilities to make smart decisions for us. Hence the house of representatives, hence electors who were supposed to get together and vote for a president. We weren't supposed to vote for a) representatives that agree with our political views, nor b) electors who are bound to vote for who we personally think is best.
In these ways we have short-circuted our representative democracy in to somewhat a messy form of direct democracy.
Unfortunately: 2) The people are ill-informed. A democracy is only as good a system as the people voting in it. Our media is doing a terrible job making people informed. Much of it is for-profit, taking stories from PR firms that are payed to get the population to think a certain thing and vote a certain way.
These two things combined means that we vote in terrible people and get terrible results. The people who control the message make a lot of money.