That might have been true until state governments realized there's nothing to check their power on local governments, and started passing legislation to severely hinder what a city can actually do. And then use gerrymandering and veto-proof majorities to allow the desires and biases of conservative rural districts to ride roughshod over the desires of more liberal cities hundreds of miles away.

I live in North Carolina, home of the HB2 "Bathroom Bill" and restrictions on cities not being able to pass more comprehensive anti-discrimination laws than those that exist at the state level. And not being able to alter their voting systems (implement IRV or approval voting) even for city elections. And not being able to apply for certain federal housing or transportation grants without the state General Assembly's approval. And not being able to stand up municipal broadband. And...well, you get the idea.

The real tragedy here is how invested millions of people are in national-level politics, yet ignore city and county-level politics which actually has the biggest impact on their daily lives. And that's where the average person realistically has the power to actually make a difference.

It's really sad to think how much progress we could make if those same people who are so outraged about Trump or whatever on Twitter were just as passionate about their local government.

Actually, it's even more granular than that. Want to shape the future? Get on the school board. Then you get to affect what an entire generation learns.

>Then you get to affect what an entire generation learns

I don't think you've ever been on a school board.

In a lot of places, there are federal and state standards that effectively dictate what children have to know. So if that state test or whatever has no relativity theory on it, but lots of low end classical mechanics problems, then guess which one the high schools in your district will spend pretty much 100% of the time teaching? Everyone from the school board members, to the school teacher, to the high schools themselves will be evaluated, publicly, when the results of those tests are released. (Some schools may even be taken over by the state or shut down if the numbers are too poor.)

Most places they generally don't take chances on spending class time on topics outside those the tests focus on, it's just too risky the way most states have structured their laws. I wish I knew some kind of a way to push back against test centric thinking in education, but it's too ingrained and there's too much riding on it. At the end of the 12 years the kids have to take the ACT in most places, and heaven help you if little Jane or Johnny doesn't do well enough on it.

I always thought that if you really want to influence what the next generation learns, you should join the company that makes the tests, not the school board.

Actually there is a single school board in Texas that saw fit to mandate children's science textbook (for the entire country) to include "creationism and intelligent design" (i.e. God) together with evolutionary theory.

And like any other positions of real power, you need money, some campaigns for school board are multi-million dollar election campaigns.

Are you kidding me?! Here in Chicago we have enormous financial problems and every year that goes by brings us further away from even attempting to fix those problems. The streets are falling apart, crimes go unsolved, pollution goes unpunished. The candidates for mayor are always first chosen by the elite, then put on stage for the public to select. It’s a joke.

If anything, it’s even easier for the powerful elite to control local governments. Look at all the polluted water flowing through lead pipes across the country — what’s happening about that again? Excuse me, time to print some money and give it to the banks in another nightly “repo operation”.

You probably don't remember Chicago in the 90s if you think things are getting worse.

the financial numbers are clear: both chicago and illinois are done. they are losing people yet adding debt, and they are not sovereign so have limited means of dealing with it. .gov will probably need to step in (federally) but this sets a real nasty precedent for the rest of the US + economy. it's certainly not getting better from a fiscal point of view.

Chicago, and by extension Illinois, are too central to the regional economy to go under. But feel free to continue believing that.

The improvement in Chicago is due to people fleeing government subsidized suburbia.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think this is a good illustration of the news dynamic.

Everyone has their own opinion.

Everyone lives in a world where "everyone I know agrees with me on this!"

Everyone is stressed because maybe some others disagree.

And then we all fall into a pattern of engaging in almost meaningless arguments about these issues with each other. Causing even more stress.

I think what the above exchange demonstrates is that unfortunately, "politics", or whatever you want to call it, really is stressful and contentious to the point of being dangerous to society even at the local level. It's amazing how big this problem is.