Two PartiesAn elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me...It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride and superiority. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too." They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied..."The one I feed." I don't care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating. Boss Tweed I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how. Joseph Stalin 1879-1953 Soviet dictator "If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power." Representative government is in crisis today, partly because it has lost, in the course of time, all institutions that permitted the citizens' actual participation, and partly because it is now gravely affected by the disease from which the party system suffers: bureaucratization and the two parties' tendency to represent nobody except the party machines. Hannah Arendt (1970) An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me...It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride and superiority. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too." They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied..."The one I feed." “As I have said for many years, I happen not to believe that within the framework of the two-party system, the Democratic Party and Republican Party, that we are going to be able to bring about the real changes in this country that are needed to benefit the vast majority of our people. Essentially, it is my view that the leadership of the Democratic Party and Republican Party are tied to big money interests, and that neither of these parties will ever represent the people in this country who are demanding the real changes that have to take place.” – Bernie Sanders "The dismal theorem of political science --- that all the skills leading to the rise to power tend to unfit people to exercise it. While there are some exceptions to this principle, there are a deplorable number of good examples. A person rises to power by pushing the other contenders down, in some cases by murder, frequently by deceit, and even in democratic societies by being more persuasive that the competitors. Persuasiveness is not always related to the capacity to live up to the persuasion." Kenneth E. Boulding, The World as a Total System p116. The Two Party System
There was no mention of parties in the constitution, but any party that intends to overthrow the government should be made illegal and blocked from the ballot. The Republican party, having made a violent assault on the capital, should now be removed from all ballots, being far more dangerous than the Communist party ever was. Jesse Ventura quipped "They shouldn't be called parties, they should be called gangs." The two party system is polarizing, allows oligarchs to select candidates and the agenda. So you may have to hold your nose to vote for either major party candidate. Neither party wants the other to accomplish anything. It is clear that the two party monopoly has failed to properly vet candidates, has become corporate, polarized people and rendered government dysfunctional to an extent that the US is incapable of recognizing, let alone dealing with serious challenges. The two party monopoly does not work for the people. It has resulted in gridlock and dysfunction. Allowing big money into politics has gamed the playing field for the wealthy. The US has become an oligopoly. What one party accomplishes, the other dismantles. Pledges to help allies keep the peace, like NATO and others are in doubt as the election of a modern day demagogue like Hitler is possible. As two opposing parties take turns in power, the US cannot be relied on to keep its word, so it won’t be great again. Ranked Choice voting could break the 2 party monopoly and should be mandatory at all levels of government. The corrupted, anti-democratic Supreme Court enabled Voter suppression, gerrymandering, big dark money, regular mass shootings, armed political violence. That's how Elections are rigged. Regular church attendance is the best indicator that someone is a Republican. Religion is media, tells unbelievable stories, denies science, obscures the truth, and enables conspiracies like ‘Jewish space lasers’ which is not only racist, antisemitic, but defies reality. If humanity does not reject right wing government, it will likely go extinct sooner than later. In time, unrestrained fossil fuel use will probably do us in. Climate collapse seems inevitable. Don’t vote Republican. BibliographyDemocrips and ReBloodlicans, no more gangs in government by Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell. |