Politics is a power struggle where those with more might make the rules. Their power doesn't come from intellectual authority or proven capability but from accumulated resources, including the allegiance that buys from other individuals, organisations, and nations.

Furthermore, politicians and mass media tend to accuse those who act against their interests of being evil, stupid, or crazy. They assign essentialist traits to individuals to not only destroy their image, but the convenient excuse for their behaviour also disincentivises people from actually looking into the circumstances behind it all. Because who knows, if people start digging deeper, the veil of lies might fall a little. And we surely can't have that.

Unfortunately, it works. Often we'll see that people accuse individuals of being the problem because that's how we're encouraged to view the world. Bad people conduct bad behaviour, and the world would be better if we didn't have these bad people. But there's more nuance to all things than we initially perceive. An individual entity might be a problem, but they rarely are the problem. Instead, they're a symptom of a more significant issue in a society that's enabled exploitative behaviour and shut down cooperation wherever possible.

That specific landlord inspecting their leased properties with nails in their shoes to scratch the floorboards so they can keep the bond? That politician who did this horrible thing is all over the news because they were thrown under the bus by their cronies? Or that mine owned by this company in the desert near that town that continues to operate despite protests from the locals?

They're all problems and need to be stopped, one way or the other. If we've ever been sick with anything, we know we should do our best to make the symptoms disappear. But we can't ignore the underlying issues that allow them to return.

The problem is that when we take one down, there are still many more to go, new ones arise, and it's only the small fry or truly backstabbed that fall. These individuals conduct their behaviour because they believe (or, unfortunately, know) that they can get away with it. The structure of our society has loopholes and methods through which they can appeal and escape the consequences, depending on which side holds their allegiance.

So we must look at what's happening behind the scenes and what "rules" allow them to conduct such behaviour and focus on shutting those things down. We don't have the energy or resources to save everyone everywhere all at once, but we have a chance at setting up and enforcing protections.

Part of the reason these individualising tactics work so well is that they mentally separate us from them, shutting off our desire to think from the other's perspective and imagining ourselves as ones who would do things differently. They allow us to blame the person's flaws but not how they had the authority to make decisions that led to problems in the first place.

To make matters more complicated, issues often go unnoticed unless communicated widely across all media — lest we forget that the mass media in the US is comprised of privately-owned, profit-making corporations. Furthermore, what counts as an issue, what we hear about, when we hear about it, and what we don't hear about, are by design. Even if we disagree, the presented content still takes up part of our attention and becomes part of our knowledge of what's happening worldwide. As a result, the media exerts a subtle yet persistent influence on us.

Have you ever tried to convince someone that something was happening, and they didn't believe you? But once it became a trending talking point in the media, that same person acted as though they knew it all along. In fact, it's so well known now that it's unsurprising and expected, so who cares? That's one of the attitudes we have to be wary of engaging in ourselves if we're to see the bigger picture. It's a little ironic that we have to work on our individual selves to see the world in a manner without rampant individualising.

But there lies another problem. Information is everywhere and what we find highly depends on how we look, what circles we socialise in, and so on.

The easier it becomes to produce information, the harder that information becomes to consume — and the harder we have to work to separate the spurious from the significant. - Edward Snowden, Apophenia

Everything out there today is competing for our attention, and we have none left to spare for the follies of those so far above us that their logic feels immoral and alien. So many of us are too busy just trying to ensure we have a place to sleep and food on the table. Those who are somewhat comfortable stress about health and the future, and those who are comfortable, fear someday losing that comfort because of how capitalism requires suffering to exist. There's always something to worry about in our precarious society.

It's not surprising then that we spend so much time on entertainment so we can attempt to relax between the stresses that everything else causes us. And it's no surprise either that hyper-consumerist entertainment is taking over in our increasingly stressful times. We go so far with this that our identities are now more often than not centred around consumption.

Try thinking of something considered a hobby that, at some point, doesn't involve spending money in some shape or form. Even in free-to-play games, someone in our household is paying for that internet connection or mobile plan. What's more, our hobbies are increasingly becoming commodified to the point that we often feel we're missing out by not making money out of them.

Sadly, entertainment's primary value in these troubled times is to distract us from all the systemic problems in the world. It keeps us in little bubbles where we feel safe. It uses personalisation to supply more of what we consume, playing to our biases and allowing us to avoid inconvenient ideas that go against our worldview. But sometimes, we need to take peeks outside to see just how bad things are. The important thing is not to stop questioning, right? So on that note, let's get back to politics.

Politics tends to be a rigged game that leaders play, and even if we learn the rules, we individually lack the power to compete. Of course, we can still hope to find ways to improve the world and work towards them together. But before we get to that, we need to start learning how the game works so that we're less susceptible to becoming pawns within it. Remember when an extended family engaged in a World War, but the casualties were primarily ordinary people?

We can't let our perceptions of how we believe things should be cloud our ability to work through the logic of others' actions. We must leave behind what personally makes sense to us and think about specific stakes. Nations don't have interests, national security only refers to protecting those in power, the market is not an all-seeing deity, and the economy is not a living entity in need of protection.

Reworking our perceptions includes determining the motivations of those who make decisions and how they use the law to keep their advantage. After all, one does not obtain and retain power by allowing the gap between them and the bottom to close. They do not maintain control by sharing it, and they no longer have an excuse for violence when no "adversaries" remain in the world. By studying these individuals' actions, those in their support, and which loopholes they utilise, we can learn what systems enable them and target those.

In Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's The Dictator's Handbook, there's an interesting example at the beginning of the book of how a small group of people can exploit the system entirely legally. This book got me interested in politics more than studying it at university ever did. (In hindsight, there was a severe lack of questioning US hegemony in my classes.)

In the book, they begin by looking at the small town of Bell — a poor, primarily Hispanic and Latino suburb of Los Angeles. The city manager of Bell, Robert Rizzo, hired at $72,000 a year in 1993, was, by the end of his tenure in 2010, seventeen years later, earning $787,000 per year. Similar cities pay council members an average of $4,800 a year. But four of Bell's five council members received close to $100,000 a year, consisting of their base council salaries and almost $8,000 per month to sit on city agency boards. They not only managed to increase their effective incomes to such a considerable degree, but they also managed to do it legally.

When the Californian legislature determined in 2005 to limit salaries for city council members in general cities, Bell called for a special election, supported by all five council members, to turn into a charter city. The difference between the two is that state or federal law determines a general city's governing system, but a charter city can have its own charter, which dictates its governance. So, naturally, any politician who wants to pocket more for themselves would prefer not to have the state dictate what they can do.

In presenting the election to the people, they argued that the change to a charter city was beneficial for all; local leaders knew what was suitable for their community more than distant politicians not in touch with "local circumstances". Who hasn't heard that line from politicians before?

Furthermore, elections on such technical questions aren't exciting, and the jargon (general versus charter) kept many people from realising the ramifications. They would have to study the differences and draw conclusions individually, which is great for politicians who use a lack of information to help get what they want.

So were this a significant national or statewide election, perhaps more people would have scrutinised the proposal. But the special election attracted fewer than 400 voters (336 in favour, 54 opposed) in a city of 36,000 people. These are tragically low numbers.

However, if we want more people to get involved in voting, we need to do more than ask them via social media to vote. The governments have done everything in their power to make voting more difficult the more financially unstable one is. It's an entirely irresponsible system that clearly isn't for the people because if it were, there would be a lot more education on the policies, and no one would have to worry about taking the time out of their day to vote. Instead, politicians still rely on individualising the problem, accusing people of not informing themselves enough and blaming them for not contributing when they are not doing their part by adequately involving their communities. The role of a politician is to serve their constituents, not the other way around.

Back to the situation in Bell, naturally, the charter passed, placing the right to distribute city revenue and form the city budget within the control of a small group of people. It also allowed them to make such changes without any need for transparency. Everything they did was legal, from misleading the public with the purpose of their election to setting themselves needlessly high salaries. The only thing that finally caught them out was the technicality of not attending their required meetings. Clearly, the law doesn't work for us — it works for those who can get and maintain power.

The classic take on this is to decry the immorality of those involved in the scheme, pointing out that not all would do what they have done. However, we need to ensure this isn't possible in the first place. Politicians shouldn't be setting their own salaries, and there needs to be complete transparency over what each outcome of an election will entail, even if no one intends to take advantage of the new possibilities. But perhaps there is some hope in that a different technicality was able to expose their operation.

Nevertheless, this was but one example. We'll continue to look at more recent examples as time passes. But if there's anything to take away from this, it's these simple points:

• When it comes to mass media, read different sources and between the lines because the whole thing is bread and circuses;
• Read into the history, interests, and professional relations of individuals in power to get a better picture of why this or that is happening;
• Remember that politics is less about serving the people and more about obtaining and retaining power.