What can the American people do to change the way our country is run?

Keep voting out the incumbents, no matter how much you like them. Eventually they will get the message and start doing their job.

The one way we can change the government is to vote in people who are willing to compromise. It seems like every election time we vote for the person who votes for our party’s bills and blocks the other party’s bills. The people who always block bills are often the type that don’t like compromise. They are too far left or too far right, often more left/right than the voters themselves. We need politicians to be in the middle, not too left and not too right.

Welcome to Fluther.

Alternatively to what @WestRiverrat suggests, we could keep electing the same people time after time, rewarding them for the same old same old bullshit… and after the collapse we could just take pot luck with whoever the Chinese believe should govern.

It is not who we vote out that matters, it is who we vote in. Once we vote a person out, they have already done their damage. While we may be punishing them for their past actions, we are also rewarding the person who wins the election and offering our approval for that person’s future actions.

We cannot have a democracy by the people and for the people with a mainstream press that spews infotainment in lieu of investigative reporting, a Washington lobbying structure that is weighted thoroughly on the side of the corporatocracy, and election campaign financing that converts perfectly good candidates into whores of the oligarchy.

Add to this an inefficient educational system that no longer teaches critical thinking, guaranteeing somnolent constituencies unequipped to derive fact from fallacy.

Change those things and we may get our democracy back.

For all practical purposes, there is only one political party in the United States and it has no interest in representing the people.

Our democracy has all but been stolen from us. Our elected representatives work for the interests of corporations that fund their campaigns and not for the citizens that elected them to office.

I think I love you
I thought I was the only one who noticed, lol

You’re welcome. And welcome to Fluther.

@Espiritus_Corvus – Best answer in a political thread that I have read in a long time. Seriously.

Chomsky fan by any chance?

@Espiritus_Corvus Bravo!

@tom_g
Chomsky, Zinn,Thoreau, Emmerson, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine and beyond. Bit old fashioned.

@Espiritus_Corvus – Great taste in authors. May I recommend Democracy Now w/Amy Goodman (although you probably already listen to it).

@tom_g Oh yeah, Amy’s an old acquaintance. I remember her from the Pacifica Radio days. But I don’t consider the above a left-wing ethic, it’s merely about how America has been hijacked via successive Supreme Court rulings going back to the 1800s and various other sellouts. If the corporate-dominated one party system isn’t recognized for what it is and the above changes are not made, nobody – left or right – will ever get the America that they envision.

Give up pushing the culture of entitlement.

WTF? Who is this John Boehner?

Perhaps Congress needs a third party. Like the Green party for example. Most European democracies have more than two parties in their parliaments.

I agree with that, if the parties we are stuck with know there is chance that they will lose a seat or two they may start working for us again instead of their own party.
I say to invite a third or fourth party to the primary and see what happens.

With the onslaught of political power, underhandedness and greed from ALL sides, I’m afraid your suggestion wouldn’t float lizardking, they would merely hand pick another puppet regime and manipulate the voting polls as they have in the past and since the general population continually gets side tracked by shiney things, the major parties will indeed create a third, fourth and even fifth party so long as it benefits their end game goals (major party interchangeable)..
@Espiritus_Corvus has an answer but this Country has grown in strength so much that nothing we could do would change their greedy ways save popular vote.. Eradicate the Electoral College! It’s an antiquated process that went out with the horse & buggy.. LET THE CITIZENS DECIDE BY MAJORITY VOTE ALONE!! (after all, it’s our future we’re voting for and not some bureaucrat or corporation).

well put, it seems we all feel helpless and un-able to do anything.
Let’s see what the hispanic population does to change things since they have grown in population at an alarming 168% (noted) in the last ten years. They unite, and you know what they say ” United we stand, Divided we fall ”.

OMG! ! I don’t even want to think… “united states of mexico”.. •¿•

This is a reality in our lifetime, if we can’t as a nation put some honest people in our house this will be. Think about every time an illegal couple have a child in this country it is a natural citizen and in 18 years a voter.