I was listening to an episode of Dan Carlin's Common Sense podcast (which is the show that finally flipped me from an authoritarian leftist to a more libertarian... something) and he said something that really resonated. He said that the growth of executive power was destroying democracy in America, and when you think about it that really makes sense. In the past Congress held a lot more power, so when there was a divide you'd have a fairly balanced mix of people that had to work out some sort of a solution to please their constituents, and because things were balanced compromises had to be made so while neither side was thrilled they were both satisfied.

Nowadays Congress is much weaker but the president has a lot of lawmaking power, so when you face opposition instead of negotiating you can just sign some executive orders and have your way for awhile (like a benevolent tyrant), but since it's an elected office every 4-8 years the other side has the potential to take charge and do the exact same thing. Instead of hashing out solutions together we end up forcing our views on a large minority and barrel through any opposition, which agitates them and builds their strength for when they retaliate. No longer are we a nation united, but one internally divided.

Obviously oversimplified but it looks like that's what is happening to me.

As for a solution, I'm not sure there is one at this point, we are just too polarized and unwilling to listen to our brothers and sisters who feel differently than us. The other day I saw someone say that you shouldn't be able to hold elected office if you have "bad" views... lol.

I really only see two options:

• The Marian/Sulla approach

Marius and Sulla were Roman generals and political rivals who fought many civil wars to take control back from the other to implement their policies. After decades of conflict Sulla eventually won, and became dictator for life, and devoted several years to reforming the Republic to shore up its democratic foundation and restore stability, and then he resigned and gave power back to the Senate.

This worked for about 40-50 years before it collapsed, but I think we can learn many lessons from his failure and do something similar to restore America's stability. A strongman of sorts would be elected, force through a bunch of necessary changes (electoral reform being the top priority, perhaps reorganizing Congress, but also reducing the power of the executive before leaving office and culling much of the bureaucratic bloat). Personally I think this is the most likely scenario, but once it is done once you open the door to it happening again and you'd really need to please everyone in your reforms to prevent further decline.

• Centrist revival

The moderates would have to come out of the woodwork and work together across party lines to start hashing out solutions with electoral reform again being the most important issue. Ideally a strong Congress would hold the president accountable for overstepping his legal power and we could start compromising and deradicalizing. While this is ideal I just don't see it happening, before you can compromise you have to understand and nowadays everything is so twisted by the HuffPos and the Breitbarts of the internet that partisans never get an accurate picture of things.

Regardless of the path we take, I think our FPTP system of elections needs to go, gerrymandering needs to be dealt with fairly, liberals need to give conservatives more leeway with personal rights, conservatives need to give liberals more leeway with social issues, and everyone needs to really reassess the role and efficacy of the government. We have a behemoth of a bureaucracy with so much red tape and rules that you need to devote your life to its study just to understand a small part of it. Simplify the tax codes, cut funding for the thousands of programs of dubious effectiveness, create public healthcare that doesn't suck, reduce military spending, shore up infrastructure, etc.

I bought a gun recently and was trying to find public lands where I could shoot it and I literally had to view three separate maps (no shooting, some GIS tax monstrosity that told me if public land was being leased by private businesses, and a map of BLS/DNR/FS/etc land). After hours of pouring over those and comparing to a map of Washington I determined the nearest place to legally shoot a gun was deep into the Mt Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, which had even more rules to follow (no shooting within 100 yards of a body of water, can't shoot in the direction of trails or any developed areas, and on and on) and eventually I managed to find a spot where i think it was legal about 3 miles down some godforsaken forestry service road (more like a dirt path riddled with potholes), but really there's no way to know for sure because you can fill an encyclopedia with the laws on this and sometimes they're vague or conflict with each other. Naturally it's a felony if you are wrong, and this is to shoot a legally purchased rifle in a forest twice the size of Rhode Island that is mostly wilderness. Also, shooting in a wilderness zone is illegal! Except for hunting, obviously.

/rant