Systems Fail

I resign from two-party politics.

I reject the system that is failing the many for the benefit of the few.

"Choose between bad and worse," they say. "Anything else is throwing your vote away."

If I cede that point—if I don't challenge it—then my options are a party of Christian nationalist, neo-fascist oligarch-worshippers; or a party of spineless, toothless corporate sell-out shills. None of whom have any interest in creating a more equitable society. None of whom believe in "freedom and justice for all." None of whom believe in those immutable words of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

By the way, I feel it necessary to point out that the ideals I just listed are the foundational precepts of a political theory called Liberalism. Yet, over and over again, in the news and in public discourse, I hear people use the word "liberal" as though it were an insult. As though wanting to preserve the greatest number of freedoms for the greatest number of individuals were stupid or shameful. As though this very country weren't founded upon liberal ideals. As though it weren't those liberal values that have driven the greatest advances in civil rights for American citizens.

Do the people who drink from mugs inscribed with the words "liberal tears" actually know and understand what they imply by their distain? Or do they earnestly believe that the world would be a better place if freedom and justice were preserved for the few, not the many?

Here's the truth: They only say that voting for a third party is throwing your vote away because they are afraid. They are afraid that enough dissenting voices will recognize and challenge a system of governance that primarily—and in most cases, uniquely—benefits the elite class. Because if that happens, if enough people wake up and shout with one voice, this classist system will perish, deposed by the very forces that uphold it.

Supporting a third party is not throwing your vote away, and here's why: Anytime a social movement or independent political party gains enough traction, one of the primary political parties in this country subsumes those ideals into itself. Just look at some of the political movements of the last hundred years. Whenever a movement gains enough traction, it forces one of our two main political parties to pivot. Every way in which the Republican and Democratic parties have changed over time has been a strategic move to either secure more power for themselves or to remain relevant in a shifting political climate. And in a democratic republic like ours, those two goals are often one and the same.

But here's the bad news. By the time you reach the voting booth, it is too late. If you have done nothing to support a third party—if you have not raised your voice, attended rallies, passed out fliers, and volunteered your time—then voting for a third party is and act of throwing your vote away.

The goal here is not necessarily for a third party to earn enough votes to win an election. The goal should be for independent voices to garner enough public support and attention that one or both of our political parties must change or risk the political death knell of irrelevance.

Until then, I will be strategic. Sometimes that will mean voting for a third party. But more frequently it will mean writing my representatives, attending rallies, educating myself, and doing whatever I can to make my voice heard.

I will not accept that my only options are between bad and worse. Instead, I choose to follow the dictates of my conscience. I will be defiant, if necessary.

There are not only two ways forward. Our options are limited only by our imaginations. There are infinite worlds we could dream into existence. I see no reason why we should settle on one of rampant poverty, war, and climate disaster.

I have just a couple more thoughts to collect.

To quote President John F. Kennedy: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

To quote the Declaration of Independence again: "...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

The United States of America is afflicted with illnesses that cannot be cured by apathy or neglect. This is the role of political activism. I will be part of the peaceful revolution. But if the changes that we, the people, find so necessary for our very survival to implement are resisted, what other recourse is there?