I don't mean to make light of a serious problem, but it's funny how widely that sentiment is echoed.

No.

This is an outcome of having democracy operable at a local level; the entire outcome of localism is "your local special interests control the system". What that means, in practice, is the people who have time to burn control the system. That is either (1) retired people (2) semi-employed activists or (3) paid lawyers/lobbyists. 3 is often paid by the local big fish.

Add/subtract as your locality changes, but the principle is the same. Kill the hyperdecentralization, and you kill the balkanization.

If you want real change in the US, you have to gut the localism principle comprehensively.

edit: get involved in local politics, even on the margins, and you start seeing that change is very possible, and there are a lot of people passionately invested in not changing. This has nothing - ZERO - to do with US political alignment, BTW.

Or a politician is simply reacting with the changing viewpoints of their constituents in regards to a failed policy. You know, how well-adjusted members of society behave when faced with changing circumstances.

I simply cannot tolerate this “us vs them” mentality in American politics.

But clearly this is how the government currently works. If you don't want it to work that way, you'll need to change it.

>To say that the real solution is to just hope and pray that the legislature comes to their senses

No, the solution isn't hope and prayers, its activism, donations and getting others politically involved (especially about things that aren't the president).

correct. there's no easy answer, there's no silver bullet. it's on all of us to demand this of our local policymakers.

I'll bite.

The first thing I would do in a desperate situation in a position of power in a dying region is be radically open to feedback and transparent with my own ideas.

A desperate situation is no room for ego or selfishness.

You involve the community, and you try to listen to everyone, and if an opportunity presents itself that is above your paygrade you try to hope that the COLLECTIVE wisdom of multiple people with different strengths might somehow help offset your power imbalance.

Now, listen to the podcast that interviews this inexperienced elected official and ask yourself if he did anything of the sort, or if he just saw an opportunity to enrich and embiggen himself: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/wbhjwd

As a non-US citizen I can't.

good thing we don't have small groups of organized opposition showing up to these things and blocking progress while calling themselves "concerned neighbors" or "neighborhood coalitions"

oops no wait thats whats happening now.

I'm not sure how it's a very SFBA thing to point out that the people who have a voice in local politics are the people who haven't been displaced?

> Poor and working people have mobilized plenty of times before

This would require them working in their own rational self-interest too, though -- which (a) there isn't much evidence for, and (b) kinda negates your earlier argument about assuming rational actors.

Reach out to their congress-person (and other political representatives) with their worries. If that is hopeless a priori, please abolish the district system (which tends to cause a two-party system) asap and implement something that actually represents the people.

they are already in control. Why would they try to change anything?

It makes perfect sense if you think looking incompetent is better than looking like you're supporting something that will lose you votes.

In my opinion this is the result of a mentality that sees the government as the obvious solution to problems, so when you see problems existing in a place where people seem to have a different philosophy of government, its clearly the fault of those morons who don’t realize that all problems can be solved by sufficient application of government force.

> if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues.

Some people actually do want to fix things on some level, but they are quite confident in their understanding of the problem and they believe that the indicated solution is clear, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is either stupid, or evil, or both. So they’re unwilling to abandon what they see as a perfectly correct solution because a bunch of evil morons want to argue about “unintended consequences” or “agent-principal problems.”

Other people are more interested in signaling their ideological alignment with the above, and the object level issue provides them with opportunities to signal.

Gotta start at the top. Transparency and clarity of spending coupled with simplification of the tax code. In the meantime, deference to smaller regions can help (but not on everything) where accountability is more real.

> These are structural problems in the nation and I think secession is going to occur in the next 50 years or so.

Nah, apathy wins in these situations where boats are not rocked significantly on either side.

This is the problem then! You've identified what the actual problem is.

I have a different idea of what the federal government should be doing than you. I want the government to be as limited as possible and focus on fundamental issues like national defense. The federal government continually fails - see Hurricane Katrina, Iraq / Afghanistan (Obama made the situation worse!), the Great Recession - these are caused because a centralized all-knowing all-powerful actor can’t fix every problem. It’s my philosophical belief.

How will the pandemic be solved? The individual actions of millions people making their own localized choices. That’s how everything ultimately gets solved.

You can dream of a perfect president who could wave his hands and make everything better. But it’s simply not possible.

Saying that and then countering with your own.

Yeah, the pen dropping is a bit over the top, but as of now the claim is that this situation is planed for and will resolve itself. A report now wont tell us anything of significance. It will get interesting if the realignment fails.

> Oversight and accountability to the citizenry is a foundational principle in a functioning democracy.

I don't see micromanagement in that list.

You appear to be calling on him to lobby his government to do something.

Couldn't someone say the same of you? Why are you not calling on your government to do something about your local problems? Running away from them won't help your own area.

Honestly, with this issue, and it's a huge issue, it seems the government is broken. I don't know how the Dems plan on solving this either, so I'm not sure replacing every GOP politician with a Dem politician will solve anything.