our four-party system
People always say we have a two-party system in the US, but we actually have a four-party system. Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, and Republicans. The Democrats and Republicans compete for power, but the Greens and Libertarians compete for purity. The Greens and Libertarians have very different principles, but they do have principles -- published principles that do not change from election to election. Whereas Democrats and Republicans shift their platforms every four years, sometimes swapping places, as happened in 1968 when many Southern Democrats flipped to the Republican party after LBJ embraced civil rights for POC. [The decades of proudly racist Southern Democrats were finally over ...]
The competition for power between Democrats and Republicans looks a bit like a democracy, but when people have only two choices they don't have much room for expressing their policy preferences. So what we get instead is basically a referendum on whether the economy is growing fast enough -- "are you better off today compared to four years ago". There may also be a fatigue factor, in that people get tired of the current party not paying attention to them so they try the other party not paying attention to them.
And a few other issues matter, such as education, health care, crime, abortion, and immigration, but not to the point of actually solving the problems. For example, a bunch of voters switched to Democrat over abortion rights last year, but Congress has passed nothing at all regarding abortion rights. These other issues are merely additional reasons for throwing the bums out and trying somebody else. Trump wasn't able to build a wall. Obama wasn't able to pass universal health care. Biden wasn't able to Build Back Better (whatever that was supposed to be).
In a multi-party parliamentary democracy people get more of a menu to choose from. For example, in Israel 10 different parties have seats in their parliament. But I'm not sure how to convince US voters to rewrite our Constitution to have a better system. Most of us want other choices than Biden and Trump, but 98% of us voted for one of them last time, so, if you really wanted other choices why didn't you vote for somebody else? Even when it was Hillary vs. Trump 94% voted for one of them. People say they want other choices, but then they ignore the other choices available to them.
We do select our presidential candidates via a months-long state-by-state caucus/primary system; if people wanted other choices for the two major parties, they could choose different people. But will they?
US voters generally seem uninterested in using their powers to effect change. Yet they're unhappy.
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I was considering adding a charity to my list, a charity that provides abortion assistance to indigenous peoples in the US. So I was following them on Twitter. And then ... they got into a Twitter fight with a different charity that also provides abortion assistance. The fight was over racial identities, whether white people are "white saviorist" in giving to white-led charities instead of POC-led charities.
Sigh. I was thinking of giving you some cash, but then you had to get all reverse-racist. Twitter accounts blocked other Twitter accounts, etc.
We can't unite over providing abortions, no, we have to fight over racial identities and the skin colors of the people in charge of providing abortions.
It made me wonder what's the point of an indigenous identity in the 21st Century -- yes your ancestors arrived here before mine, but that was all centuries and millennia ago.
But then a friend of mine weighed in about his own identity-based "trauma" and "oppression to me based on my lived experience".
If somebody treats you poorly because of an imaginary category, does that make the imaginary category real? Do you have to believe in the imaginary category because of the pain inflicted upon you in the name of that imaginary category? Apparently, yes.
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I believe in freedom of expression more than I believe in my own beliefs. But y'all express some weird shit. Perhaps if I lived in a multi-party democracy I'd realize having more options doesn't help, we still wouldn't be fixing our problems, but I dunno, I'm stuck living here in the US for now.
Democracy is a system for providing legitimacy to the ruling class. I happen to think it is better than hereditary monarchy, or a College of Cardinals, or a one-party state. But you still end up with a system that provides legitimacy to the ruling class. And then what? The ruling class does what it wants, under cover of "legitimacy". Subsidies for military spending, subsidies for fossil fuels, subsidies for renewable energy, low taxes, deficit spending to stimulate economic growth, higher profits, higher asset prices. And an Internet run by algorithms that encourage us to fight each other over imaginary categories.
But we've always fought each other over imaginary categories. Us vs. Them. Democracy lets us choose which Us to join. I guess that's an improvement.
The competition for power between Democrats and Republicans looks a bit like a democracy, but when people have only two choices they don't have much room for expressing their policy preferences. So what we get instead is basically a referendum on whether the economy is growing fast enough -- "are you better off today compared to four years ago". There may also be a fatigue factor, in that people get tired of the current party not paying attention to them so they try the other party not paying attention to them.
And a few other issues matter, such as education, health care, crime, abortion, and immigration, but not to the point of actually solving the problems. For example, a bunch of voters switched to Democrat over abortion rights last year, but Congress has passed nothing at all regarding abortion rights. These other issues are merely additional reasons for throwing the bums out and trying somebody else. Trump wasn't able to build a wall. Obama wasn't able to pass universal health care. Biden wasn't able to Build Back Better (whatever that was supposed to be).
In a multi-party parliamentary democracy people get more of a menu to choose from. For example, in Israel 10 different parties have seats in their parliament. But I'm not sure how to convince US voters to rewrite our Constitution to have a better system. Most of us want other choices than Biden and Trump, but 98% of us voted for one of them last time, so, if you really wanted other choices why didn't you vote for somebody else? Even when it was Hillary vs. Trump 94% voted for one of them. People say they want other choices, but then they ignore the other choices available to them.
We do select our presidential candidates via a months-long state-by-state caucus/primary system; if people wanted other choices for the two major parties, they could choose different people. But will they?
US voters generally seem uninterested in using their powers to effect change. Yet they're unhappy.
-----
I was considering adding a charity to my list, a charity that provides abortion assistance to indigenous peoples in the US. So I was following them on Twitter. And then ... they got into a Twitter fight with a different charity that also provides abortion assistance. The fight was over racial identities, whether white people are "white saviorist" in giving to white-led charities instead of POC-led charities.
Sigh. I was thinking of giving you some cash, but then you had to get all reverse-racist. Twitter accounts blocked other Twitter accounts, etc.
We can't unite over providing abortions, no, we have to fight over racial identities and the skin colors of the people in charge of providing abortions.
It made me wonder what's the point of an indigenous identity in the 21st Century -- yes your ancestors arrived here before mine, but that was all centuries and millennia ago.
But then a friend of mine weighed in about his own identity-based "trauma" and "oppression to me based on my lived experience".
If somebody treats you poorly because of an imaginary category, does that make the imaginary category real? Do you have to believe in the imaginary category because of the pain inflicted upon you in the name of that imaginary category? Apparently, yes.
-----
I believe in freedom of expression more than I believe in my own beliefs. But y'all express some weird shit. Perhaps if I lived in a multi-party democracy I'd realize having more options doesn't help, we still wouldn't be fixing our problems, but I dunno, I'm stuck living here in the US for now.
Democracy is a system for providing legitimacy to the ruling class. I happen to think it is better than hereditary monarchy, or a College of Cardinals, or a one-party state. But you still end up with a system that provides legitimacy to the ruling class. And then what? The ruling class does what it wants, under cover of "legitimacy". Subsidies for military spending, subsidies for fossil fuels, subsidies for renewable energy, low taxes, deficit spending to stimulate economic growth, higher profits, higher asset prices. And an Internet run by algorithms that encourage us to fight each other over imaginary categories.
But we've always fought each other over imaginary categories. Us vs. Them. Democracy lets us choose which Us to join. I guess that's an improvement.