Political news hosts will rail against an opposing party member, declaring they must be replaced for passing legislation the pundit disagrees with. To which I always wonder: who will replace them? And who will replace the people who elected them and their financial backers? Who will be in their position in twenty years’ time? You can keep picking apples from an apple tree hoping for a pear, but it will not happen. If you keep returning to the same tree year after year, you can find variations in taste, color, and size, but you will get the essential fruit every time because it derives from the same tree.
If the tree is rotten to the core, you need a new tree, not new fruit. But media sorts are experts at placing blame on the fruit (or politician) and promising listeners the next harvest will be better. As long as they can deceive the voters in this way, the voters will never think of looking at the tree itself—the parties and the system they depend on. Voters fixate on the food fight, pointing out whose fruit is worse rather than at the fundamental issue of the tree itself.
Individual politicians owe some accountability to the voters but less than to their party and backers. In reality, we often discover politicians’ success is based on what interests back them, or perhaps their chance of preventing the “other guy” from winning. Politicians say what they need to the voters to come to power, and then join a political elite in Washington DC; they receive pressure from these groups, which affects how they vote more often than the people who elect them back home do.
I am not saying “outsiders” never win an election, make any difference, or stay unspotted from the corruption of political parties in DC. Both parties have genuine representatives elected by the local people sent to do their bidding. But they are not a majority in either party and thus have little effect.
It has been years since I read the article, but my local newspaper, the Rutland Herald, quoted then-President George W. Bush, who was seeking reelection, as saying something to the effect of “we have been looking for help from Vermont for a long time.” His mentality is a perfect display of top-down governance. He sees elections and Vermont Republican voters’ purpose as sending help to the national Republican Party. Elections are not to have someone representing local interests but to help a national party gain access to tax dollars. Politicians from both parties even redraw districts to their advantage. They do not serve us; we serve the party.
Some perceive voting as a ritual conditioning participants into believing they control or at least significantly affect their government. It allows them to think they have the power or the potential to actually transform it. The state lets you assume you can win others over to your way of thinking and shape the government to your desires. But in truth the bureaucracies are conditioning political power as well as the voters’ minds, ensuring the continuation of the system they benefit from.
I find it inconsistent that our society cannot forgive people for things their ancestors who had similar pigmentation did hundreds of years ago. Yet, we forgive our major political parties every election cycle. Politicians can promise to solve the same “issues” as the previous candidates who failed and get away with it. We actually believe they will solve the problems this time.
The two-party system takes advantage of this short-term memory loss. After four or eight years of inadequate rule and unkept promises, support for the party in power wanes. It often becomes so bad Americans are ready to try anything else, even the national party they rejected four or eight years prior. In this way, the two-party system helps poor national parties dominate; their current failures help ensure their later success.
Do we really have “liberals” and “conservatives?” Is the Republican Party a genuine opposition? Is there really much difference between Republicans and Democrats? I do not believe there is as much difference as is often assumed.
As I continue further down the rabbit hole into the madness of the pre-state kingship of the Middle Ages, I occasionally glance back to observe these Democrats and Republicans. From this great distance, they appear remarkably the same. The vast majority of humanity before World War I and certainly before the French Revolution would agree.
The two parties are comparable to trees of the same species, differing only in their outgrowths, size, shape, and leaf color. But as far as genuine contrast between the two, there is very little found. Perhaps we could compare them to two sides of the same coin. The coin is flipped every two or four years, displaying a veneer of contrasts but underneath, at its core, they are the same composition, the same value, and part of the same economy. The discrepancies are generally cosmetic and surface level only. Professor Jason Brennan described the differences: “They both agree to buy the Camry; they’re now just debating whether to get the sports package or hybrid.”
I cannot vote for Democrats because they remind me so much of Republicans, and vice versa. I can’t because they are both just advertising salesmen campaigning in search of power.
They agree most of the time, but these instances are never spoken of or debated because they are the presuppositions to which they both agree. They are the uncritically accepted foundations of a democratic society. They fight like hell over the 5% where they disagree, which makes the headlines and gives the perception of two distinct parties.
Legendary linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky said, “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” The nineteenth century French observer of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits, the writer is free; but woe to him if he dares to go beyond them.”
So Republicans and Democrats will argue intensely and work to defeat their enemy, yet they are much more alike than different. They focus on small, minute details where they differ; in doing so, the entire system and its foundation go undebated, unargued, and accepted. They accept the dragon in the room and debate if they should put the fire out with water or smother it with a blanket.
We don’t realize the similarities between the two because they are the unquestioned assumptions of our society. Those who fall outside the emotion-ridden left vs. right struggle generally view Republicans as watered-down Democrats. Libertarians often say there is “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two bureaucratic centralized national parties.
Admittedly, the differences are sometimes significant, for example, in defining life and gender (at least for now). The Republicans tend to lag behind progress, but they progress nonetheless. We should understand these parties as one national party with two speed dials, one slow and one turbo, but both are progressing. Historian Christophe Buffin de Chosal explains:
“The left and right today are in fact, merely two aspects of the same political current…The degree of leftism can be different, but the fundamental principles are the same…the main European political parties are in agreement on what is essential in their eyes; a government that is powerful, interventionist, and centralized as much as possible…the politicization of media, the civil service, the justice system, and the military; subjecting political decisions to the interests of the money powers – therefore globalism and immigration…rejecting all traditional morality while unconditionally defending a state morality based on human rights, secularism, relativism, and ant-discrimination; the necessity of a central bank, unlimited credit, and inflation…heavy taxation; free and compulsory education, omnipresent bureaucracy and state interventionism in as many domains as possible.”
