Political Screed
Dec. 21st, 2004 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herewiss13It's sad. I'm still a staunch supporter of the Electoral College (despite the advantage a straight majority election would give to the democrats (blue states have biiig cities while red states are generally big but lonely), however I think I've just about given up on political parties. The Blue/Red paradigm needs to be shattered.
And not just because politics has gotten boring, though that does play a part. Can you imagine the U.S. with a multi-partisan system? The feuding would reach an all-time high, while any sort of majority stranglehold on the dialogue would disappear. An extremely entertaining scenario.
Mainly, though, (and I'm stealing some ideas from David Brin's blog here) it's simply a matter of the Democratic and Republican parties not representing sufficient people sufficiently well. The "brand-names" are spread too thin and try to patch-over too many mutually inconsistent ideologies.
Think of what politics would be like if we had a dozen different parties, fracturing the continuum into many grey facets, rather than bisecting it with black and white? You'd start with the Anarchists, then the greens, then several varieties of social and economic liberals, a few centrist parties differing on one ideological point or another, fiscal republicans, social conservatives, Libertarians, the religious right, the true "we're living in the end-times" fundamentalists and those wackos of all wackos: the neocons. Think anyone would actually vote for someone running on a pure neocon platform?
If nothing else, a many-party system would make it much harder for the religious reactionaries to hijack half the country's political mechanisms in a single sustained coup...and if a party did become co-opted...then all that would be necessary is the formation of another party to carry on the formerly-hijacked political platform! Like a lizard abandoning its tail, no true ideology could be subsumed by another. Each would have its voice and each voice would be much more in proportion to the number of citizens who actually ascribed to it.
(I just can't help grinning at the thought of six rabidly fundamental zealots sitting in the corner, representing their true "base" and being ignored by everyone one else; just left to stew in their continually regurgitated vitriol. It's petty of me, but there you are.)
In practice, you'd get something very much like a parliamentary system where groups of like-minded parties would come together on the issues they agreed with. Libertarians and Greens could unite to squash socially-limiting legislation and then part ways again when it came to the environment or economic policy. There'd be a much greater incentive to join together with dissimilar ideologies for a short-term goal without compromising the long-term goals. Greens and libertarians can certainly agree that the Government should stay out of the bedroom...even if they can't agree on anything else. So any cooperation between them would be a win for both, despite the fact that, in our current system, they're barely even allowed to speak to each other.
So you'd end up with a general progressive/conservative split in congress...but the battle-lines would be much more nebulously drawn and there'd be much more latitude in regard to individual pieces of legislation, allowing for more nuance, flexibility and a better representation of the will of an actual majority of The People.
It'd make the presidential race much more interesting too, with coalitions of parties nominating candidates. I'm guessing it'd probably break down to 3 main nominees in such a situation: Left, Right and Center. At this point, having a truly centrist president would be awesome all by itself. ;-)
While decidedly left of center, part of me admires this model for the mere fact that it'd be that much harder for any legislation to get passed. Everyone would be getting in each other's way. If you could actually manufacture a coalition big enough and long enough to pass some bill...chances are it'd be a truly worthy piece of legislation.
An overly optimistic vision? Certainly. But since it is utterly utopian, I'm allowed my fantasy. Who knows? The way the massive Republican ideological machine is straining at the seams, it might not be so completely fantastic after all. Pressure is building throughout the entire system, and even if the abuses of this current election cycle get repressed like those of the last one, it's only a matter of time until major upheaval of one kind or another. Momentum for chance is building. The System needs to be repaired, or it's going to get replaced...one way or the other. I'm still not sure whether that'd be with a better democracy or a worse despotism. Only time can tell.
And not just because politics has gotten boring, though that does play a part. Can you imagine the U.S. with a multi-partisan system? The feuding would reach an all-time high, while any sort of majority stranglehold on the dialogue would disappear. An extremely entertaining scenario.
Mainly, though, (and I'm stealing some ideas from David Brin's blog here) it's simply a matter of the Democratic and Republican parties not representing sufficient people sufficiently well. The "brand-names" are spread too thin and try to patch-over too many mutually inconsistent ideologies.
Think of what politics would be like if we had a dozen different parties, fracturing the continuum into many grey facets, rather than bisecting it with black and white? You'd start with the Anarchists, then the greens, then several varieties of social and economic liberals, a few centrist parties differing on one ideological point or another, fiscal republicans, social conservatives, Libertarians, the religious right, the true "we're living in the end-times" fundamentalists and those wackos of all wackos: the neocons. Think anyone would actually vote for someone running on a pure neocon platform?
If nothing else, a many-party system would make it much harder for the religious reactionaries to hijack half the country's political mechanisms in a single sustained coup...and if a party did become co-opted...then all that would be necessary is the formation of another party to carry on the formerly-hijacked political platform! Like a lizard abandoning its tail, no true ideology could be subsumed by another. Each would have its voice and each voice would be much more in proportion to the number of citizens who actually ascribed to it.
(I just can't help grinning at the thought of six rabidly fundamental zealots sitting in the corner, representing their true "base" and being ignored by everyone one else; just left to stew in their continually regurgitated vitriol. It's petty of me, but there you are.)
In practice, you'd get something very much like a parliamentary system where groups of like-minded parties would come together on the issues they agreed with. Libertarians and Greens could unite to squash socially-limiting legislation and then part ways again when it came to the environment or economic policy. There'd be a much greater incentive to join together with dissimilar ideologies for a short-term goal without compromising the long-term goals. Greens and libertarians can certainly agree that the Government should stay out of the bedroom...even if they can't agree on anything else. So any cooperation between them would be a win for both, despite the fact that, in our current system, they're barely even allowed to speak to each other.
So you'd end up with a general progressive/conservative split in congress...but the battle-lines would be much more nebulously drawn and there'd be much more latitude in regard to individual pieces of legislation, allowing for more nuance, flexibility and a better representation of the will of an actual majority of The People.
It'd make the presidential race much more interesting too, with coalitions of parties nominating candidates. I'm guessing it'd probably break down to 3 main nominees in such a situation: Left, Right and Center. At this point, having a truly centrist president would be awesome all by itself. ;-)
While decidedly left of center, part of me admires this model for the mere fact that it'd be that much harder for any legislation to get passed. Everyone would be getting in each other's way. If you could actually manufacture a coalition big enough and long enough to pass some bill...chances are it'd be a truly worthy piece of legislation.
An overly optimistic vision? Certainly. But since it is utterly utopian, I'm allowed my fantasy. Who knows? The way the massive Republican ideological machine is straining at the seams, it might not be so completely fantastic after all. Pressure is building throughout the entire system, and even if the abuses of this current election cycle get repressed like those of the last one, it's only a matter of time until major upheaval of one kind or another. Momentum for chance is building. The System needs to be repaired, or it's going to get replaced...one way or the other. I'm still not sure whether that'd be with a better democracy or a worse despotism. Only time can tell.
