Well, there are rumors, or at least promoted Tweets, claiming that a bunch of republicans are planning to split to form their own party. I’m not sure (because I a) don’t trust the reporting and b) suspect a paywall) if its the Fascists breaking away to prop up their golden-would-be-god-emperor, or if it’s the remaining sensible conservatives who want to pursue policies other than Hate (or at least put a nicer façade over it).
Frankly, I don’t care. The two-party system in American politics is broken.
Yes, I know there are many parties: Libertarians, Working Family, Constitution, Green, etc, but they don’t get airplay on national TV. They usually end up, from what I can tell, falling in line between the Democratic and Republican parties, so what is a “plurality of voices” becomes more Us vs. Them.
And Us vs. Them soon applies to EVERYTHING. There’s no escaping it. Child Molesting? Not universally reviled, but supported by one group because the other is against it, which is stupid, but the natural result of the two-party system. There’s no good reason for it, other than it allows for shortcuts in thinking and feeling, and can sell books and advertisers.
I had high hopes in ’92, when professional ass-clown H. Ross Perot bought his way onto the debate stage. I had hoped that at least a third party could rise to the national level, but nope. Didn’t happen. This was a few years after my high school senior government teacher told me that Americans couldn’t handle more than black and white choices. I didn’t go back to ask her opinion, but I was kind of secretly glad it happened.
Remember the jokes that Obama could asphyxiate the GOP by proclaiming breathing a good thing for everyone to do? The GOP would hold their breath and possibly die, and it didn’t seem all that unlikely. If he had described it as something approved by scientists and the AMA, he could have trolled one GOP member to pass out on the floor of congress.
The lack of facts is killing us, but really it’s the lack of grey-area thinking, the lack of nuance, the inability to see deeper than Us vs. Them. The world is more complex that talking heads can summarize in a chyron.
We need more long-form journalism. We need fewer “easy answers” and raise more questions.
We deserve better than what two parties can give us.