Good passion, Dave, I like your article.
It is my experience that all cultures contain parts that are not all that mobile. Like a big bag of sand in the middle of a living room, folks simply don't bother to move some of the cultural stuff out of the way, accept it for what it is, and walk around it. We call it culture.
Same with politics, folks accept it for what it is and walk around it, thinking 'whatever' and 'I don't care' until it hits them where it hurts and then they spent their time fixing their own problems and not the larger political problems. Twice, the bag of political sand is not touched.
Particularly nations with winner-take-all have this problem. The system is very crude (in the US two parties are in control, that's all folks) and so the bag of sand is extremely large by default. People have learned to walk around the political bag. Their ears wide open, their feet not moving an inch toward, only away and around.
Even though the US Constitution already demands proportional voting at the local level of city and county (14th Amendment ruling that governments cannot have discriminating systems in place if there are better systems available), it is extremely hard to move anyone to help lift this bag of sand at the local level and make it smaller.
I was most surprised (disappointed) when talking with minorities who are hurt most by the winner-take-all system (because: the majority gets the representative, no one else). Answers such as "politicians just need to make better decisions" and focusing on the bad cop in good cop/bad cop tells me how there is a complete lack of understanding about political systems. Folks walk away, not toward political reform. Folks do not even look at the system or compare it to other systems.
Those that have political passion (such as yourself), invent something new rather than try use the US Constitution to establish change. They sail against the wind, not with it, and so the bag of sand remains in place.
Ranked Choice Voting has some success in the US, but it is only a change of makeup. It is still the same old winners taking all, so don't expect the bag of sand to become any smaller because it won’t.
I claim success for proportional voting because the Green Party embraced it in 2020. It is now an official Green Party item high on the agenda. Naturally, and realistically speaking, they do not (yet) have a real good understanding what exactly they embraced. But it is a start, declaring that something is wrong with the bag of sand.
Talking about political parties, the Republican Party has an excellent understanding of the system — this is really the smart party of the two. The Democrats only half-heartedly know the system and are not good at manipulating it. The Democrats are not woke, if you allow me to use that word. They desire to make decisions as if that bag of sand is not there. When the bag of sand prevents them to succeed, they cannot lift the bag because they are part of the bag themselves. The Republican Party makes use of that bag of sand at every opportunity. They are very skilled.
I wish you good luck presenting TDG. I have critiqued it before and so I know you have heard this before: I do not see it move the bag of sand. It looks like a replacement, but it is still the same I heard this minority person say "They just need to make better decisions." You are not touching the actual system.
I have been surprised how much divide-and-conquer has fully and deeply established itself in this culture. The winners control; the (relatively large group of) losers are not touching the system, too preoccupied with their personal problems that are influenced large-scale by the political system that will never present them a better fix — unless and until the majority is also hurt by the same problems.
The bag of sand definitively is the winner in the US.
Good luck, Dave.
Here is my latest article:
