My fellow Americans,
Our government barely avoided shutdown yesterday. Many of you likely breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that government services- or maybe even your job- would remain open for another week. However, anyone with eyes can see that this shutdown is merely symptomatic of an issue tearing our government and our people apart: partisanship.
Indeed, our government has been torn asunder, ripped in two by their own ideologies. Rather than see the similarities in the other party’s desires (Freedom, Democracy, and what’s in the best interests of the country and its people), each party insists on vilifying the other over policy decisions with unknown outcomes, claiming hypothetical situations as facts and attempting to assassinate the character of their opponents.
Yet their attempts to destroy each other are not limited to each other, though it may seem so to them. Rather, their partisanship is ultimately destroying the Democratic ideals of our nation. Indeed, our republic was conceived as a way for all viewpoints to be heard and for the best solution to any problem to be debated over and found by taking every opinion.
But instead we have only two views on any issue. There is no such thing as political moderation anymore. You are a Democrat or a Republican. The only other possibility is that your political views aren’t even legitimate enough for consideration. You must be an insane libertarian, or an evil socialist. Indeed, in the current political climate, politicians deviating from one of the two political bastions are essentially viewed as having something wrong with them.
This is a totally illegitimate form of government. Indeed, it is dividing our entire nation down lines of ideology, to the point where different ideologies deliberately expose themselves to different media than their supposed rivals, thus further entrenching the divisions between them as each side is propagandized, each vilifying their opponents.
Yet what solution do we have? Both parties are so financially entrenched as to be impossible to overthrow. Both parties are worth essentially millions of dollars, and those parties and their media outlets convince many people now, that those parties, or even only one of those parties, have the only set of legitimate political views. This is, as we all know, a fallacy. We must refuse to buy into it.
And ultimately, we must refuse to buy into two party politics. The sort of ideological division they create is destructive for us and for the nation. And there is an alternative, a solution. Indeed, I doubt it will surprise you when I propose it.
Electronic direct democracy would undo partisan politics by undoing parties entirely. Indeed, by removing the politicians and their need to campaign, we undermine the financial political structure that upholds these parties in their power. Any third party has as much a chance of passing legislation when it has less to do with how much money they can funnel into electing officials to support them and far more to do with convincing people of their ideals, their opinions, and their policies.
We must eliminate those who seek only to hold us back, even if they are totally unaware of their attempts to do so. Even if there were a politician who thought he had the interests of the people at heart, as unlikely as that sounds, were he a Democrat or Republican, he too is contributing to the downfall of America.
Should partisanship threaten to shut down the government again, it will become only more apparent how destructive it truly is for our livelihoods, for ideological freedom, and for the safety, security, and future success of America. We need to make a change before the government refuses to offer us those important services we need. We need to make a change before the livelihoods of thousands are ruined by bickering parties, neither of which truly has our best interests at heart. The time is now. It’s up to us.
-Cleisthenes
“We stand now with a choice, not between Republican and Democrat, but between ideological freedom or self-imposed imprisonment of the mind.”
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