Comment Re:What an Age to Live Through (Score 1) 32
Actually I would say we have more than enough resources to deal with these issues if we wanted to but right now there is no political will to address this on the level that would be required.
That’s hard to argue with. The gap between capacity and will is one of the defining tensions of our time. What’s particularly maddening is that this isn't some moonshot—the technologies, models, and even regulatory templates exist. What’s missing is the structural alignment to prioritize them.
We have the money, we have the people, we have the know-how to study and create action plans, we just don't want to do it and our voting reflects that.
This one I hesitate on. It’s true that voting trends matter, but reducing the failure to act to just voter apathy or preference risks overlooking the asymmetry in how influence operates. Gerrymandering, dark money, lobbying, and procedural gridlock all distort the link between public will and legislative outcome. “We just don’t want to” feels too blunt for a system this engineered.
We found $200B for immigration enforcement, no problem there, jumped in both feet first, this is the issue the American public thinks is #1.
I get your point: when something aligns with MAGA's political narrative, money appears. But again, the mechanism isn’t just public opinion—it’s narrative salience weaponized by media ecosystems and electoral incentives. Environmental policy rarely gets that kind of narrative heat, even though the stakes are existential.
For example, why are there only 11 co-sponsors on this bill to reduce the amount of single-use items and all from one party?
Exactly. That number—11—isn’t a failure of political will; it’s more of a structural issue. It points to a deeper truth: the mechanisms that should translate public concern into action are systematically misaligned. Political representation in this country is skewed heavily toward a GOP that does not represent a national majority. Not by a long shot. The Senate, for example, gives Wyoming (580,000 people) the same power as California (39 million) to legislate. That is a simple fact of the US system. The Electoral College inflates the influence of rural states, allowing candidates to win the presidency while losing the popular vote—as happened in 2000 and 2016, and again in 2024. And as a result of this structural situation, five of the nine Supreme Court justices represent the preferences of presidents who lost the popular vote.
So...when legislation stalls, it’s not for lack of evidence or even popular support. It’s because the architecture of governance in the U.S. is built to resist change—any kind of change, and one party, the GOP (especially in its current MAGA incarnation) ruthlessly exploits that. So yes—even with cultural momentum, an issue that is not MAGA-aligned is going to go nowhere, legislatively. That’s not apathy. That's playing by the rules while the other team works the refs.