An Introduction
Most people don’t feel confused about politics because they’re uninformed. They feel confused because what they’re told doesn’t match what they experience every day in their lived reality.
They’re told the system works. They’re told participation matters. They’re told outcomes reflect effort, fairness, or public will. Just jump on YouTube and you will find no shortage of “influencers” who will tell you that your lot in life is by your own design. That there are no outside factors influencing it.
And yet, wages are stagnant. Housing is quickly becoming unattainable as homelessness skyrockets. Healthcare feels like a privilege for the rich and a death sentence for the working class and poor. Institutions feel distant and corrupt. And decisions that affect millions are made with little visible accountability, if any at all. This disconnect is not a personal failure, it’s a literacy gap. And not an intellectual one, but one in understanding how power actually works.
What This Series Is
How Power Actually Works is a twelve part political education series designed to explain the mechanics behind the system we live in—plainly, without slogans, party loyalty, or fear-based messaging.
This is not a news cycle. It’s not a call or persuasion to believe anything. And it’s not about telling people what to think. What it is about is making the machinery visible. Each section focuses on a different layer of power:
- how influence is distributed
- how language and rhetoric are used to persuade and pacify
- how policy shapes real life
- why elections feel limited
- how change is actually forced
- how people survive and build stability when systems fail
Every section in this series stands on its own. You don’t need to read it in any particular type of order, but there is a logical progression if you start from the beginning. Nothing here requires prior knowledge of politics either. And you don’t need to identify with either side of the two-party system to understand it.
Before we can talk about elections, policy, or change, we have to understand who holds power, how it’s protected, and why it often feels out of reach. Power is not abstract. It isn’t neutral either. And it sure isn’t evenly distributed. It lives in structures—economic, legal, and institutional—that quietly shape outcomes before most people even know what is happening or are invited to the conversation. And when those structures remain invisible, frustration gets misdirected. It’s directed inward and manifests as shame or burnout. It goes sideways toward neighbors or communities. It’s pushed downward to people with the least amount of power. Understanding power and how it works changes all of that.
As stated, each of these categories stand on their own, but there is a flow. Each section builds intentionally. Each section builds a new layer—language, policy, elections, counter-power, and eventually, how people build stability and endurance over time. Nothing here is designed to overwhelm. It’s designed to ground. Because people who understand the system, they don’t panic at every moment. They recognize patterns. They conserve energy. And they engage with intention instead of outright despair.
You don’t need to agree with everything here. You don’t need to adopt an identity. You don’t need to arrive with the “right” type of politics. You only need curiosity. Understanding how power actually works doesn’t radicalize people, it does the opposite. It stabilizes them. And that is where we begin.
Next and to begin: Let’s talk about Corporate Power, Extraction, and Control.
View the whole series: How Power Actually Works.
