Reason #1: The Dance of the D.O.P.es
When I was a student at UCLA, I used to debate members of the American Communist Party in Pershing Square in downtown L.A. They tried to argue that the Soviet Union was a “worker’s paradise,” but I knew that was a fantasy. The USSR was nothing but a repressive dictatorship, with communist party bosses hoarding all the goodies while the “workers” beneath them barely got enough to get by. Back in those days I would have never dreamed that we’d wind up in a similar situation here in America. But that nightmare has come true.
We’re facing an almost Soviet-style manipulation of power in Washington now. Only instead of a communist elite stuffing their faces while their comrades starve, we’ve got professional politicians living like kings while they rig our democratic system to hold onto power for life.
The democracy game is damn near over in this country thanks to the dance of the D.O.P.es - our two Dead Old Parties. It’s a woozy waltz of the power-blind leading the power-blind. Around and around they go, one D.O.P.e guiding the other around Capitol Hill for a couple years before switching to the other. To keep anyone from crashing their party, they manipulate the electoral map so that incumbents never lose. They “box out” independent challengers by making it almost impossible for them to get on the ballot. And they mow down grassroots movements by forcing third parties to play by a different, and much more difficult, set of rules.
In the end, it doesn’t matter which D.O.P.e is in control, Demo-dope or Republi-dope. The results are the same. They grant themselves generous salaries and lavish benefits - on our dime - but they do nothing to earn their keep. They don’t solve our country’s dire, long term problems. They don’t listen to the people. They don’t inspire any hope. And instead of governing wisely and steering our ship of state towards safer waters, they spend all of their time raising cash for their next reelection campaign.
Dear Poppie,
Thanks for teaching me to be mad as hell! I am 11 years old but that does not mean that I cant be P O’d about the shit in the goverment. Yes, they keep us going but they=BAD DOODOO.
Your loving Grandson,
Brenten
The Democratic and Republican Party have been stagnant for too long. That is why I have converted to the Libertarian Party because their ideas coincide with my own. The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) only allows the two major parties while keeping the independent parties out. Both of the major parties offer the same thing, big government, big spending and more control on our rights. We need to kick out the “career” politicians and elect fresh blood.
If you still think your vote is being counted, you’ve never heard of Diebold or ES&S.
One of Diebold’s senior programmers was convicted of 23 felony counts for planting backdoors in software. As for ES&S, their former CEO was Chuck Hagel, a highly unknown individual at the time, who quit months before running for Senate and winning a “landslide” upset against a popular incumbent, during which his Nebraska election was conducted exclusively on machines from his ES&S company.
All the more reason, I stick with paper ballots. If you can apply for an absentee ballot, do so! I trust the paper ballots more than the voting machines. It’s been eight years since the Florida voting fiasco and we still don’t have voting machines that work properly.
The issue here isn\’t the ineffectiveness of the two parties. The issue here is HOW to break their grip on our democracy. Third parties have been trying over, and over, and over, and over again to rise up and battle the Democrats and Republicans, but they\’ve enjoyed dual control for more than a century. Doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? I think that\’s the definition of something….
If you truly want change, a new strategy is needed. A strategy like this:
http://www.meltingpotproject.com/mpp/why-third-parties-lose-and-how-they-can-win.html
Dear Lee,
Let it burn.
The system is not worth saving.
Your friend,
Yankee doodle