i haven't even taken a position dude, i was just trying to see where you were.

one side of my family, they practice law. my opinion is nuanced. there are definite positives from citizen review of judges but most judicial decisions are opaque, most citizens know so little about law as to not understand what judges do, honestly if we could properly address the issue of regulatory capture first (which would solve a hell of a lot of problems in government, but that's another can of worms and it's one i'm legitimately not sure how to solve) i would have very little problem leaving it to appropriate government appointees. because if regulatory capture is addressed, (and that's a huge, glaring red flag assumption) then nonpartisan legal experts would be doing the judicial appointments and review.

judge elections are where the citizens get to step in and say, as a random example out of nowhere "hey, judge who gave rapist brock allen turner no sentence? you don't get to be a judge anymore" so like, that's their only legal recourse. Remember, "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Please use in that order." We absolutely do not want to be shooting judges (that's a complete failure of society), and we really don't want to be putting them on trial for making stupid decisions (they have what is called sovereign immunity for their decisions made legally from the bench, specifically judicial immunity if the AI summary on the search i just ran didn't lie to me. sounds right and i think that's what my lawyer siblings taught me i don't know years ago) so what we have left are soap box and ballot box. Soap box isn't great, because turning the populace against the justice/criminal-punishment/whatever-euphemism-you-want-to-use/legal system such that they lose faith in the ability to obtain justice is not good for society altogether. So the ballot box theoretically remains as a viable outlet/pressure valve for the public to be able to get a small measure of justice it is unable to get in the jury box. Even when actual justice remains out of reach, allowing the public to vote against the judges who presided over the courts that denied them justice lets the public feel they have recourse.

Do you see the theory?

By using the same onion quote I used several comments earlier, I am both pointing out the circular nature the discussion has taken on, and strengthening my point, since your current phrasing sounds even more similar to the idea that Americans uniquely insist that they are unable to change anything, even though other countries have changed in exactly those ways and started addressing their problems.

You insist that you're special snowflakes different from everyone else, and come up with reasons for why you can't possibly change, rather than just picking issues and starting to address them in some way, even if imperfect.

Republicans have deluded Americans into thinking that nothing can change. That is the rot at the heart of America.