Killer Klowns from Kampaign Space; or, the rigged game

[unixronin]

So, lemme see.... here we are on Clown Selection Day.  If Bush wins, America loses.  If Kerry wins, America loses.  If neither Bush nor Kerry achieves the 270 electoral votes required to win (electoral-vote.com currently has them at 262 Kerry, 261 Bush) then the House selects the President and the Senate selects the Vice-President, and probably America loses.  (But maybe not quite so badly, if the House and Senate pick clowns from opposing parties.)

I personally believe there are possible outcomes of this election in which America does not lose.  Unfortunately, I don't see any of them as particularly likely, because way too many people -- even though they don't like either major-party candidate -- have bought in for far too long to the idea that it's a good long-term strategy to vote for the guy you'd sooner sell your wife to slavers than vote for, in order to get rid of the guy you'd sooner sell your daughter to slavers than vote for.

This is a really, really terrible long-term strategy.

Why?

Because it guarantees that the major parties (or party, depending on your viewpoint) can continue forever cramming absolutely appalling candidates down your throat, worse and worse each election cycle, and you'll continue to vote them into office each time, because at the time of the election, it looks as though the challenger may be marginally less repulsive than the incumbent.

Meanwhile, there's candidates out there that are a lot better than anyone offered on either the Democrat or Republican ticket in, say, the last 20 years.

"Aha," you say, "but they have no chance!  A third-party vote is a wasted vote!"

For this election, you're probably right:  Third-party candidates stand little to no chance at the national level in this election.  But why is that?  It's because you, and tens of millions of other people just like you, "know" that they have no chance, and therefore you won't vote for them, holding your nose and voting instead to keep one or the other faction of the Big Government Party in power, and fulfilling your own prophecy.

"It's too important to defeat $INCUMBENT this election," you protest.  "Maybe next election."  And what happens when $CHALLENGER turns out to be almost as bad as $INCUMBENT, just in different ways?  Or equally bad?  Or worse?  Will you hold your nose again next election, and the one after that, and the one after that?

This is how the game is played.  Third parties will never have a chance until you start voting for them, and you won't start voting for them as long as the Big Government Party's two branches can keep you holding your nose and voting for one of them to get the other out of office.  The game is rigged, and the Demoplican and Repubocrat political machines are playing you, the average voter, like a cheap guitar.

Yeah, that's right -- they can keep the electoral process locked up between the two of them, as long as they keep offering you awful enough candidates.  The moment they start offering you candidates who are actually half-way decent, and one of them gets elected, you'll have a breathing space, and you'll figure you finally have a chance to look around you and vote your conscience -- "Because, y'know, this guy's really not that bad, so if he gets another term, it's no big deal, and we'll have another chance in four years."  And that's the beginning of the end for them.

They don't want that to happen.  They want THEIR agenda enacted, not yours.  The strategy of offering you god-awful candidates has proved highly successful at shutting out third parties, and they're going to continue doing it as long as it keeps working -- which means as long as you all keep buying into the lesser-of-two-evils strategy.  What's more, all the partisan dirt and skulduggery both sides pull is a distraction; as long as they can keep your attention focussed on which of their two branches is stealing votes from the other, they figure you won't notice that the whole system is rigged to keep you voting for them.

So you say you only realistically have the choice of Chump A or Chump B this election?  Well, there's a simple solution:

STOP VOTING FOR THE CHUMPS.

That's all there is to it.  So, go out and vote, if you haven't already; but think about the way the system works.  Make it work for you, not for them.  If you EVER want it to get any better, then sooner or later, you have to start voting for change, instead of for a continually-worsening status quo.

And if not now .... then when?

Comments

[ttocs.livejournal.com]

I think we are more or less in agreement.

I happen to think that 3/November this year is when the serious 3rd party effort should commence (At least for Presidential)

More to the point, we need to strengthen 3rd (or 4th...) party involvement at the local and state levels, and in the legislature so that a nth party president wouldn't be hamstrung to start with.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Some kind of proportional representation scheme would be a big step forward, too, instead of first-past-the-post. But that's probably never going to happen as long as the Repubodemoplicacrats retain control.