The Two-Party State
The Democrats might be the Republican Party.
NOTE: Within this text, wherever gender is not key to the explanation, I am using the Elverson ey/em construction of the Spivak Pronouns.
I believe that there are two political parties governing the U.S. but those two parties have lost control of the process. It has been commandeered by an organization whose purpose is to deconstruct the system. This is in opposition to rational political parties which seek to manage it. In order to properly convey this message I will need to provide some context.
I would like to propose that a political party comprises a group of people sharing a particular philosophy regarding how best to run their country. Within the United States, organizations have sought to subvert the law or engage in hidden activities for the purpose of private gain. These groups also have a shared notion regarding how the nation should function. They disagree with the rest of us regarding what laws should be enforced and what societal norms make sense. They exploit their power to promote their shared goals in order to extract value from the wrong side of the common wealth. We don’t call those societies political parties, we call them criminal organizations.
Consider what you might think of any organization that engaged in the following enterprises:
- corrupting federal law to steal public resources (land, minerals, tax revenues) for private gain
- promoting falsehoods and propaganda to hide activities that hurt the innocent
- hiding rather than exposing corruption from which they personally profit
- providing kickbacks through legislation to their corporate partners
- conspiring to prevent citizens from voting in order to gain advantage in excess of deservings
- suppressing investigations into their own illegality through distraction and misappropriation
- reducing government services for the weak while funneling public monies to powerful associates
- conspiring to thwart the rightful agenda of a duly elected president
- conspiring to destroy government from within in order to prove that government doesn’t work thus reducing options for opponents
- conspiring to corrupt the judiciary for their own profit
How would one assess an organization engaging in these enterprises? One may consider that for these projects to succeed, an organization would need to be deeply embedded in the political system. Success at such endeavors would be impossible without vile and unconscionable cleverness. Therefore, one must admire any organization that has infiltrated so deeply into the political system of a nation. I claim that these behaviors do not define a political party but instead a criminal organization. For this reason, I never refer to the Republican Party but instead simply to the Republican Organization. It is well-funded and driven by a common set of nefarious goals which include voter suppression, diversion of public funds to wealthy associates and installation of incompetent and favorably biased federal judges.
This is not a new idea. Adam Serwer in his Atlantic article We Can Finally See the Real Source of Washington Gridlock describes the Republican Organization in much the same way. He just leaves it to the reader to recognize that these are not the behaviors of any honest participant in the political process; and that anyone who would associate emself with such an organization is either a conspirator or a dupe.
The Two Democratic Parties
For this reason, I claim, we are left with only two actual political parties: the conservative right-wing Democrats (the Democratic Party leadership and their followers) and the progressive left-wing Democrats (well represented by Michael Moore, AOC and Ilhan Omar). Those two parties have entirely different sets of shared values and goals. The right-wing Democrats are everything that the Republican Party was prior to Newt Gingrich. The Progressives are everything the Democratic Party would have liked to be had it been liberated enough to try Psilocibin mushrooms in the 1970s. For this reason, they would be best represented by two separate parties.
The Democratic Party is irreconcilable and must split. I suggest that a clean move would be for the progressives to form a new party in close association with The Democratic Socialists of America (a virtuous and active progressive organization which is not a political party). In a pinch, individual candidates may be able to persuade The Green Party to accept them for particular races, but The Greens (while very progressive) have been a fixture in the U.S. for over thirty years and have not succeeded in accumulating any sizable influence. For that reason I suggest a new home-grown party as a fresh start. I’m open to persuasion, but that’s my proposed direction.
With two actual political parties battling it out and making it clear that the competition is between our American political parties and the criminal organization seeking to corrupt our American government, I think there may be a chance of expunging our system of Republican corruption. I believe this is possible because I attended a Bernie Sanders rally in 2016.
Are You My Daddy?
I was on a running track at the University of Colorado at Boulder surrounded by a mass of citizens held captive by Sanders’ well-practiced (indeed often repeated) narrative. He spoke of problems and solutions. He spoke of desire and fulfillment. As I listened and watched the various faces (some bright and positive, some dull and yearning) something became very clear. He was delivering two messages. Both were being delivered deliberately and consciously. One message was to those collected to hear about positive change. The other was delivered to those yearning for relief and comfort. That message was delivered to those who saw no future, who had lost all understanding of their agency in the world and who just needed any hope of deliverance from the suffering. The message was clear yet carefully hidden from the bright-eyed liberals, it was “I am your daddy and I will protect you.”
As I listened it became clear to me why Sanders’ message had resonated with coal miners in Kentucky. His message appealed to both rational liberals and to sentimental regressives driven to constant abject fear by their Republican oppressors. The construction was ingenious and at that moment, I was positive that he could not lose to the twisted and falsely cerebral Clinton because his message would cross ideological lines. Then, of course, the Democratic party leadership made his victory impossible.
Well-trained progressives will learn from Sanders. They will pull from all regions and philosophies. They will preach the positive popularism of the progressive — advancing workers’ rights, universal health care and low-cost higher education. If we leave out trigger words like communism and feminism, we find that these concepts fly well with authoritarians and rational liberals. They will draw not only from the anemic right-wing Democrats but also the desperate right-wing Republicans. Remember that in the 1930s Kansas and Oklahoma were radical socialist hotbeds. Workers, freed from the influence of the Marketeers of Capitalism, warm quickly to those who present reasonable solutions to their real problems.
The Democratic Party must give up on its Giant Tent. It has no relationship whatever with progressives. It is a deeply conservative right-wing party. Its leaders are pitiful, dessicated grovellers suckling at the corporate teat. They have no interest at all in the common worker or the average citizen striving to make a living in a billionaire-monopolized world. They agree largely with the purported naïve views of the Republican Organization which is why the election of a Democrat to any seat generally just keeps that seat warm for the next Republican who will then continue the Republican project of corrupting the U.S. government.
The Democratic Party, while clearly useful idiots for the Republican Organization, are not quite clever enough to be a criminal organization. The Progressive party will eschew corporate investments and focus on monies from the common citizen. While the occasional green industry and worker owned coop may support their endeavors, monopolies and environment corruptors will play no part. They will focus on the preservation of our earth and its inhabitants.
A Positive Option
A new progressive party could draw from the traditional Democratic field and the traditional Republican field. It could actually pull a majority from the artificially constructed populations hounded into submission by current political leadership. Both Democrats and Republicans have had to resort to the argument that you have no other options and therefore you must vote for their candidate. The Republicans count on a more dull and submissive electorate but the Democrats use a very similar subterfuge arguing that a vote for another party will lead to disastrous consequences. Both count on fear as their ultimate driver. A third party showing exceptional candidates with a serious popular acceptance and a message of action rather than fear will draw voters into that positive frame. Indeed, while the Republicans present an appealing angry parent, excluding your favorite friends but protecting you from zombies, the Democrats present your nice but slightly creepy uncle. Maybe you liked him but you were not excited about his presence. Meanwhile the progressives will present a vibrant parent who lets your interesting friends into the house and buys pizza while showing a cool show about astronomy. The progressive parent brings in the rational liberals and the desperate right-wing.
We are at a unique place in U.S. history. We are at a point where a third party could actually prevail as the Republicans prevailed over the Whigs in the 19th Century. We have two mechanically animated corporate promoters and a promising store of interesting creative firebrands who can learn the Sanders dual-message technique and claim a fair number of votes from all sides. Such a candidate could actually win or, at the very least, put the fear of the common people into the white flabby chests of the right-wing regressives who currently rule.
Let us stop submitting to blackmail by organizations that keep offering inadequate options. It is not your responsibility to vote as you are told. It is your party’s responsibility to provide a candidate worthy of your vote. You should vote for the candidate that you believe will best serve. From now on, that is what I will do. If the Democrats offer me a senile conservative groper with a stuffy conservative VP, I will be voting for Dario Hunter, a fine candidate who will raze Washington to the ground. If Bernie runs under a different banner, I will vote for him but my clear number two is Hunter. Declare your freedom and liberty, vote your conscience and demand a political party that will provide a competent candidate.
Julian S. Taylor is the author of Famine in the Bullpen a book about bringing innovation back to software engineering.
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