This is some gaslighting bullshit. On a list of the problems faced by the populace, MP pay isn't even a blip on the radar. People would gladly double their salaries, if they actually did something about housing, cost of living, the NHS, crumbling infrastructure, etc.
I've found that any of the top distros work just fine. It's the Desktop Environment that I interact with most often, so I'd spend some time studying which is most comfortable. (I'm a Gnome man myself.) Go to distrowatch.com as they do a pretty good job describing each distro and their standard packages.
A bulkanized US would certainly be good for the planet, assuming it survived the preliminary civil wars as nation state boundaries are created and alliances made with Canada and Mexico. Who gains control of all the nukes would be a big question.
Libya agreed to give up it's nuclear ambitions and look what Obama did to them. DPRK, despite seven decades of effort by the US to destroy it, is still standing. What lesson is a world leader in the US's crosshairs supposed to garner from these examples?
And we are commenting on a device whose WiFi signal was inspired by the work of Hedy Lamaar.