No one educated on the issue is criticizing that governments are able to effect positive change. It's that our governments are setup in a way that ineffectually compromises balance with shortsighted popular political stunts & corruption via dealings in secrecy.

I know this is a major tangent but if we want government to represent us, we have to change it in simple ways.

- Force living standards of the middle class onto them. No special treatment like elevated healthcare and huge pensions. They're not kings, the world won't end if they die a shitty death like the rest of us.

- Tie their wages to the average middle class citizen. That way they're rewarded for improving the living standard of most of the country.

- Retirement after office. No chance for lobbying. No bribing them with cushy jobs+bonuses after their term of exploitation.

- Creating a voting system that actually works. Stop this popularity contest BS and genuine altruistic leaders.

- Mandatory factual education per-requisite for voting for specific areas of expertise. No one should be able to vote until they meet a threshold of competency and comprehension of the candidates. These tests should be by a unbiased third party non-profit.

- Make the lives of representatives activities completely public, in real-time. It was their choice to represent hundreds of millions of people. They need to sacrifice their freedom for our own.

Bet this would fix a lot given most of these issues we're getting ourselves into are human problems rather than ideological problems. I would also like to see basic income be tried on a large scale for once, that'd be interesting.

It's a vicious cycle. Americans believe that governments are incapable of improving anything because the U.S. government (both Federal and state levels) is notoriously corrupt and incompetent. This in turn causes Americans to be apathetic about fixing their government.