The French have more of a social safety net, which enables extended protests. I understand the irony in stating this (well then, USian, get off your ass and demand a social safety net), but the chicken-and-egg problem is real. This is setting aside cultural mores and biases; for an example thereof, see sibling comment.

It is one reason, but certainly not the only one.

The Citizens United decision virtually ensures that the average voter, even in aggregate, has nothing important to say. Shortly, one particular U.S. citizen will have a net worth of $1T; and this, more than anything will ensure that “We the People” are only noise, compared to the real signal.

> Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French.

Sir, I'm fleeing this country. The time to protest was 30 years ago. Or 70 years ago. Either way, it is well in the past. This country will need to crash and detox from its addiction to money before it can become a real democracy.

That is a problem, but the larger problem is people don't have an informed vote. They vote for a party straight down without considering what they really support, or what the unintended consequences of those things are.

The representative system in the US is all but dead when it comes to high-power politics, this second Trump presidency has vigorously shown that. They weren't of that much use before, also, apart from blocking a few essential things here and there. They're also not at the Caligula's horse in the Senate moment, but they're rapidly going that way.

Social unrest is not usually a hallmark of a functioning society.

I think they are afraid they are going to get creamed in November, but for some reason they are more afraid of the president.

They might not be wrong about this, the president is known for siccing the department of Justice on his political enemies.

When you figure out how to leverage a vote to get something, let me know. Last time I tried this I was screamed at for electing a fascist for withholding it.

mid terms will be fun, and scary to watch. Consequential times....

AIPAC bought the KY-04 seat by pumping so much money into shows demented boomers watch that they completely upset the usual primary voters in the state by getting truckload of demented people to show up from a 30 second sound blurb played over and over that Massie was selling out Kentucky to the democrats. This despite the fact the votes from last term's primary voters basically did not change at all.

It's actually mind blowing how effective AIPAC is. They managed to upset one of the most popular Republicans in the US house by a genius campaign at non-voting demented boomers by tricking them to believe probably the most conservative guy in the entire congress is secretly a Democrat.