In ww2, we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japanese civilian populations in order to compel the nation's leadership to surrender. We did not use our nuclear assets to terminate the enemy civilian and military leaders. Today, we routinely employ our military assets to terminate enemy combatant leaders: drones, snipers and high tech ordnance allow precision removal of enemy command  and high-value assets.
   The modern innovation of asymmetrical warefare, and the massive growth of mass media of the past century have resulted in extensive erosion of the trappings of honor and martial mores that informed western martial culture and warfare for centuries. The soldier is no longer popularly imagined as an honorable, heroic officer defending society, but as just another monkey in the chain (arranged in a long line by height, each beaten by his larger neighbor while busily beating away on the smaller monkey on his other side...)
   There is something wrong with the way our nation uses martial interventions. Parcel to this issue is our use of mercenaries in our modern military actions. Private military corporations are an end run around our democracy, and allow an egregious misuse of American combat veterans, who are these businesses primary employees. The issues attending warfare are altogether too vital, and important, to be trusted to private companies. And the men and women defending our nation while in private employ deserve the same protections and compensations as our military personnel serving in our formal military.
  We live in a nation tormented by a storm of miseries. Beset by a bewildering stew pot of problems, systemic abuses, human weaknesses and political contention, it is difficult to prioritize. Modern America is in a disastrous state: we are living in a national Emergency Room in a disaster and while we mostly all agree there  is a problem of some sort, we cannot even come to agreement about a triage policy. Certainly no agreement about what the problem actually is, or a triage policy,  is in any danger of suddenly blooming into consensus.
  My first impulse is to be more loving, to look for a way to promote empathy in myself. If I could change how some of these problems express inside myself, that could be a place to start. But I think maybe that is asking too much (or too little). Perhaps we might begin using our media, already so gifted at tweaking and guiding public behavior, to promote more civic - positive political policy.
  Our political system is geared to respond to financial pressure. In many ways, our democracy functions in a figurative, rather than literal, sense. We have a functional government, it's just not really properly called a democracy - and just what it should be called would depend upon the level of government you were speaking of and belongs elsewhere. But the political realities in which we live could be used to promote a more utopian social ideal than what we currently endure. The problem is, lack of misery or profit. In order to combat the powerful private interests, one would need to marshall financial resources that could compete with those of the "enemy". As the forces arrayed seem to be those of the .5% of the  nation that control 99.5% of the national wealth standing one one side, and the 99.5% of the population who control .5% of the national wealth on the other, the result of the  conflict does not seem to be in doubt.
  I believe most of the foregoing paragraph; and while i grant the pessimistic end of the final sentence, it is not the final word on the subject. but its a complex field of thorny issues. i will lay out some of my thoughts to try and martial up some clarity:
    A small minority of our nation wields enormous power.

   Our government operates largely by forces opaque to common observation and exempt from democratic checks.

   The people of our nation are not in a position to challenge the ruling minority through direct financial means.

   The media wields enormous influence in the minds of the nation.

   Much of the work of the ruling class is carried out by systemic forces rather than through their direct oversight and intervention (the system has many self-perpetuating & self-regulating components that further the aims of the ruling class due to a convenient confluence of self-interest, abject dependence and need rather than direct, insidious manipulations by nefarious cabals)

   With these premises, I start to see a means of attacking the problem. Trying to compete on financial grounds seems doomed - the enemy are too well armed, and our side are poor by definition. However, the ability to utilize media to effect public opinion is the elephant in the room. Media in the modern age is in an unprecedented position in its' history - never before has the bar been so low so far as having access to news and information. And never before has information been more readily available, and in whatever medium a person may require. In an age of unprecedented literacy, knowledge and information are readily available in many formats, though most modern news media comes in spoken format by default.
   It seems the easiest way to begin assaulting the enemies' power base is through media. n a sense, our social fighting about choosing presidential canddates is part of thr same effort. We need to build social consensus about what the problems are, and agreement about prioritizing the solution actions. Presidential elections are great excersizes for mobiliing communities to implement social changes.
   The take away from elections is that the organizing methods, team building expertise, and deft use of social media technology are important parts of the toolchest for social change. Perhaps these organizational skills could be organized, collated and presented in a format(set of formats) and made available to activist groups. Having a common language and a technology for collaborative communication could help promote cooperation between groups with similar agendas or philosophies.  There are lots of reasons to promote the idea, I will move on.
   The nation is seething with emotion, strongly in the grip of the debates that attend the ramp-up for our coming national elections.  Much like the brief flare of charitable donations that accompany the yearly end of the western calendar, our national social conscience ignites for a brief, indignant inferno every four years. Following presidential selection, the fires are banked, receding into coals nursed by the dedicated, and those too effected, tormented or afflicted to be allowed the option of turning their attenttion away.
   It seems a tragic waste, to allow all that organization to be squandered, thrown away after the election if over. Perhaps civic groups should exist, and be utilized by candidates that can secure them. My neighborhood, in North Minneapolis, could certainly use a civic, socially minded organization that bwas well connected through social media. And while my urban setting is more charged with racial and financial issues tha the "average" american neighborhood, the utility of such a group would be very broad indeed..
   I have perhaps, again, stumbled across another argument in favor of what are, in effect, Anarchist "Affinity Groups" becoming mainstream, common facets of modern society. Of course you could never market it as an "Anarchist" anything, but the idea is the same - self organizing civic groups arranged by common interests strong eneough to motivate actual activity and action. The civic answer to religious community service organizations, in a sense. Perhaps the massive public interest in social media could be harnessed toward social progress in addittion to the practical applicationa of socializing and entertainment.