lennief

Freedom allows us to do what we wish so long as it has no affect on others. But that "affect" includes doing nothing which impinges on other citizen's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That necessarily implies a functioning society with rules (both criminal and civil (drive on the right)) that we do not have the freedom to ignore because we don't personally like them. That means helping others through our taxes, being polite, or otherwise and accepting the decisions of our elected representatives (although we can peacefully protest) until the next election if our candidate loses.

Three big things: money, professional politicians and polls. The money part is obvious. Term limits solves #2. The polling problem may not be obvious though.
Politicians now tell us what the polls say we want to hear and do what they want when they get to office. (the Uniter not Divider is a perfect example).
Without public polling (or reporting it), they would have to tell us what they would actually do because they couldn't temper their campaigns otherwise. We could then vote for people we do agree with.
Moreover, the ignorance of the information delivered is scary. The wording of the questions is never revealed especially by the press reporting on it, but that drastically can change the results. Moreover, everyone (press included) doesn't know the meaning of the margin or error. In fact, if A leads B by 6 points in a poll, and the margin of error is 6, they could be tied, or A could be 18 points up. It just means there is a probability, usually 95%, that the true result is within 6 points of the reported one.

polls is scary.

The money and term limits are hard to fix systemically especially after the recent supreme court decision.

Polls we can do something about. Stop reporting them as if they are news. They're not news.

Also, the press has to stop accepting uncritically number statements that politicians and advocay groups make. A minor bit of thought would indicate that they're nonsense. As a simple example, the crowds watching parades in Manhattan are physically impossible - literally so - but are reported without question. That doesn't matter, but when someone claims something that might affect the common weal, question the premises and logic
And if the response is a non-sequitur or talking point, for pete's sake, say "so".

Specific, sourced factual data, so that we can check it out even if the press doesn't. We will often find that the factual claims go back to a single source who was wrong. One good example is the canard taht we only use 10% of our brains.