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Corrupt plutocracy of a government removed the law that prevented mass ownership of news and media outlets. It consolidated everything into just a handful of media outlets that talk to the nation.
That, along with complete over saturation. A person trying to sort through a huge country comprised of their city government, plus their county, plus state, plus national level politics across a nation that's 8,000,000 square kilometers (not including Alaska and Hawaii) is just too much for most people to decipher and sort through.
It's even harder to mass protest here. It's not like everyone can drive inside of less than two hours away and show up in London or something. Getting to our capital to protest could be quite literally a 40 hour drive away.
That last part is particularly noteworthy. If I’m in the UK, I can make it to London in 8 hours pretty much regardless of where I am. That’s less than a full work day of driving. Many Americans have done that to visit family.
If I’m in France, I’m never more than 9 hours away from Paris. Again, many Americans have done a drive like that just to go on holiday.
If I’m in Newport Oregon, it’ll take 43 hours of driving (and crossing two full mountain ranges) to reach Washington DC. That’s a full work week of driving, just to reach the capitol.
So most Americans protest locally if they’re able. But that’s far less effective, because it splits the protests apart and makes them easier to ignore or break. Americans can’t go full “light Paris on fire for a full month because the retirement age is getting raised” because there aren’t enough protestors near the capitol to do that. The small protests that do start almost unanimously get broken up by cops as quickly as they started.
Any excuse huh? You have roughly the equivalent of the entire population of France living within a four hour drive of Washington DC, but
There aren't enough people who would actually stand up for themselves, and in particular , others, is what you actually mean
So, protestors?