Originally Posted by
Ratman
Hit the nail on the head. The thing about grassroots movements is that they are carried out in person.
Meanwhile, the fundamental problem with American democracy is artificiality. Absence of humanity at highest levels, and now with Corona the lowest ones also. When democracy had started in a city with a few thousand people, they'd get together from the corners of the country, drink together and talk about stuff and at the end of the day the people with something to say would speak their propositions and grievances. While this was happening they'd be confronted with each other emotionally and if somebody was a sociopath it'd probably be pretty well known in that regard. In that environment it would be harder to silence someone from speaking things you don't want to hear. Everyone was more mindful of not pissing each other off, not creating lasting favors they could be reminded of or grudges that would stay with them for a lifetime.
As the society grows, this does not necessarily disappear - in fact, plenty of countries are still that way. Ideally the elected officials would speak with the people and pass the notable things they heard on, with some bias here and there, but ultimately the history of the country would be decided by the human element. That's because in such places, the leading ideal of the country is something like family, or way of life, or even national pride. Something emotional, anyway.
But America is not exactly like that, America happens to worship democracy as an ideal, alongside an individual's freedom, and that's precisely the problem. You can worship God, and you can worship the king, and you can worship freedom, but the moment you elect a system over your head, you're already condemning yourself to slavery. A machine is just a machine, it will eventually get stuck or start working wrong. In that context its natural to wind up treating people as objects - parts of the machine, or the materials and products of it. If in theory there was an outside engineer capable of fixing it, their human value would be incomparably higher than anything within the machine, which is why advanced political systems like communism tend to ban engineers and the machine eventually rusts away.
This is something that'd be generally accepted in America, because of how huge it is - you can still speak to each other in person, so you can feel free. Now that's no longer the case. Now you are limited to a trickle of data that does not remotely carry people's true feelings over, where it does not matter if you anger someone, or look stupid. Your society has become 4chan. You can say what you want, because nothing you say matters anymore. Now you are actually subject to laws without honor or humanity. Good luck with that.