Reforming America: Does It Matter Which Party Is In Power?
As midterm elections decide who will control Congress for the next two years we as a nation need to ask ourselves if it really matters which party is in power. When you stop and actually take the time to think about the current state of our nation it becomes fairly clear that regardless of which party in our current two-party dominated system controls the nation the system is weighted to favor the wealthy and disregard the needs of the working class and poor. For working Americans the system is designed to demand more and provide less benefit for their efforts. For the poor the system is designed to marginalize them and keep them out of the public consciousness.
So what then do we do about bringing equity to the system? How can we fight a system set up from its inception to favor people of means over people living hand to mouth? The short answer is to change the system. We absolutely must change the way the system works at a core level if we want there to be equity in our political process. As long as wealthy interests determine which candidates we can choose from in the elections we will be beholden to the wealthy in all aspects of our daily lives in America.
For too long we have been told who we could choose from in elections and led to believe that the two-party system is inherently beneficial to the American people. The truth is that we should have more choices and more diversity of viewpoints in the political debate. When you only have two choices you are not given a real chance to see the true diversity of thought that is indicative of a truly free society. American democracy is more illusion than reality and we need to wake up to that if we are to fundamentally change the direction of our nation to benefit the majority. When you are limited to two candidates both handpicked by the power elite you don’t really have a real choice.
Changing the system will not be easy. There are extremely powerful interests behind every “major” party candidate. The millions of dollars it takes to buy campaign ads represent powerful people that will do virtually anything they can to retain their power. To say that there is a lack of ethics in politics today is like saying the Pacific Ocean is a little bit of water. Politicians are bought and paid for by lobbyists and donors that have their ear on a constant basis. Politicians that might not even see their actions as unethical are overly influenced by people who regularly pay tens of thousands of dollars for personal access to them. For the average person there is no such access to prominent politicians and therefore no representation of their needs or views.
If we want things to change we will need to drastically change how we think. We will need to ignore the political ads entirely and vote based on the history of candidates and the actual text of ballot proposals. If we want our democracy to work for the people instead of the elite we will need to fight hard to get there. We will need to convince people to reject all political advertising as nothing more than lies and half-truths. We will need to read the ballot initiatives and help others to understand what they really mean. We will need to take advantage of the technologies that allow us to see unfiltered information and use social networks both physical and electronic to spread information from person to person about the realities of what candidates actually stand for. We need to record the unscripted words of candidates and initiative proponents and expose them to the light of day.
The two-party system serves only the wealthy elite. The rich pick the candidates, they pay for the advertising that gets their candidates elected and they lobby the politicians to pass the laws that benefit them. The working class people have only their votes to use as a means of getting their needs met by their leaders. We can no longer afford to waste them on lies and illusions. It is time for a voter revolt in America. Not only do we need to throw out the two major parties, we need to reject the authority of the wealthy to tell us who should lead us. Money is only worth something because people believe in its value. We need to stop believing that because someone has money that they are more important than anyone else.
The hard working people of this nation need to use the power of the vote that the founding fathers fought and died for to bring real change to America. We need to see the benefits of our labors and we need the wealthy to understand that they are nothing without us. For the most part they produce nothing and are little more than traffic directors. We do the work and we make their lives possible. We need to put the wealthy in their place as a minority undeserving of the level of control they hold over our nation. They and their surrogates in the halls of power are of little use to working people if they cannot recognize the value of the people who give them their power. What they will not share we may well have to take from them. No longer can we afford to suffer for their excesses. It’s time to take control of our nation and our future. To do that we must start by eroding their power by using our votes to reject the politicians who serve the wealthy to the detriment of the rest of us.
Troy Wilson-Ripsom | Staff Writer | E-mail Comments on this column. | Click icon to Digg this article
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