Political Parties

What if people ran for president, and not parties?  We ask for a leader who can bring change, while at the same time asking them to fit into one of the two colored molds we have created.  We beg for someone to tell the truth, and then force them to pander to us incessantly.  Every time we end up with the same person in office, pigeon-holed by our need to define ourselves in the simplest terms.   But people are not really democrats or republicans; People have unique thoughts on how our country should move forward.  And yet, through the lens of the political system, we are coerced into thinking of ourselves as one or the other.  To participate in the process, a side must be taken, and a rhetoric adopted.  It wouldn't be as egregious if that was the only effect of the current methodology, but there is a far worse consequence:  In order to get elected, one needs to adopt the same mindset as that forced on the electorate.  No candidate could hope to be successful who simply and honestly states what he or she believes.  Instead, they must pretend to fit into a red box or a blue box, so that we can be comfortable in the knowledge that they are as limited as us.    Thus, we are left with a legislature blinded by a sense of self -importance stemming from a belief that they are on opposite sides of a never-ending battle.  Each one holds up the banner of their party as the reason for their actions to hide their true motivations.  For, unfortunately, even that untruth is only a mask for their avarice.  Behind the political parties, behind those who take office, there sits a small green man, wrinkled and wizen, cackling to himself at our primitive motivations, and the ease with which he pulls the strings.  I will leave any commentary on that figure for my next post, as it is time now for an attempt at a fix for party politics.

Have no fear, there is a solution to this stagnation.  We must do away with political parties altogether, because only then will real progress be possible.  Only then will our leaders be free to think for themselves, and no longer weighed down by a fable about a donkey and an elephant.  Those creatures never existed; they were created by us and live only in our minds.  We need to move beyond them and understand that they only served to distract us from the real issues of our times.  No longer would our legislature be unable to move, chained down by the idea that they stand for something besides the people of the United States.  Many would say that doing away with partisan politics is the first step toward either a dictatorship or a communist regime.  To them I say that it would be the impetus for monumental change, but what that change would bring no one can predict.  However, we cannot let fear of the unknown prevent us from taking the steps necessary to escape from the prison we have built.  We made up these parties, and somehow they have become more important than all of the real people they supposedly represent.  It is time to vote for people, and not parties.  It is time to do away with the excuses for the lack of any real change in how our society functions.  At the root of immobility is constraint, and one by one, we must remove the constraints we have placed upon ourselves.  The political parties, with all their divisiveness, lies, and ideologies, are a great place to start.  The next obstacle I will address, as indicated above, is money, ". . .  so they say/ Is the root of all evil/ Today."

The Plan

We are afraid of change.  We are afraid because change never leads exactly where we think it will when we begin to move forward.  There are so many facets of our society that are in desperate need of fixing, and yet we stagnate, waiting for some mythical revolution to topple all that we see as wrong with our way of life.  Even those who seek out change do so within the confines of the current system, leaving themselves without the tools necessary to move outside the circle.  I do not profess to be the one to shove us, kicking and screaming, over the cliff, but I do want to help.  That is why I have started this blog, and every day I will write a post on an aspect of our culture that needs to change, and what I think that change should be.