Real grassroots politics presents a threat to the established government class. They react to it by one of two ways: they either destroy it (by whatever means) or they co-opt it. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he’d be agitating for another revolution. He’d be right.
“If voting changed things politicians would make it illegal” Mark Twain, I believe.
Co-opting is their favorite way of defeating us. They just pretend to be us and we end up voting for them. This is how the Republic became a den of thieves.
Here is one of my favorite quotations from James Madison. It explains beautifully how we came to wake up one day and wonder which country we were living in:
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power then by violent and sudden usurptions.”