The split isn’t left/right (what the rest of the world would see as middle/extreme right), but money/workers, and I no longer see a fix. When Citizen’s United decreed that “money is speech” (it isn’t: money is power, and codifying ‘free speech’ was meant as a protection against power), the fix was to overturn that and go further to get money out of politics – but that didn’t happen.

We are in the process of losing everything that made the U.S. worthwhile. Other countries used to try to emulate the U.S. models for things like: public education, research and development, public works (roads, dams, etc.), economic model (and laws restricting it after it crashed), and lack of corruption, including laws to prevent and/or punish the latter. Now we are removing and de-funding all the stuff that made the U.S. attractive and successful. We’re working on becoming the next North Korea rather than the next, say, Sweden.

We seem to have lost all culture except for a love of money and spectacle. There’s no respect for education, Truth, Justice or the like. If an official does something questionable, they get to keep their job and the most their underlings can do about it is resign – and that doesn’t make things better. There ought to be an option where the official has to resign and the underlings who are doing honest work need not fear retribution. Instead, we reward those who can ‘spin’ the narrative or outright lie. The populace ought to be offended by those lies, but instead there is a large number of people who would rather be a good team member than demand honesty.

That’s where money comes in. You pay agents to start or reinforce several ideas, do data tracking to figure out which ones get high “engagement” scores, then campaign on that garbage rather than on anything of substance. Once you win the election, you don’t have to follow through on anything. Just give tax breaks to your backers.