ELI5 - why do satellites need to be bright? Do they have some kind of lights? Can't they just be dark and beam internet around?

Yea, but the northeast, especially major cities like NYC, Boston, and Philly, does have better public transit than a lot of the US. I know it still sucks overall (and don't get me going about the costs), but a lot of the infrastructure was built during the car boom. People do like cars, and they make sense for most of America given how much sprawl we have.

Yes, I have seen that point and also a paper discussing it, but I am a bit skeptical. It could potentially just delayed... which transitions well into your speculative point:

Next is speculation on my part, but I imagine people are turning conservative more based on their wealth than their age. We saw a correlation between age and conservative sentiment because people tended to gather wealth as they got older.

That is a very good point because inequality is killing wealth accumulation. It's a very good working hypothesis imo.

Agreed. Reddit became horrible once everyone got on it.

People have been saying this since the 60s. Lots of young people are still conservative and many areas are still solidly red. I don't see a massive blue wave that garners a supermajority happening anytime soon.

Yea, that only works for cities. America will still need tons of cars for everywhere that isn't a city. It's a very low density country, all things considered.