From the time I was a young child in elementary school, I was led to believe that American elections were the gold standard of free and fair elections. It was made to seem to me as if the great political minds of this country dedicated themselves to rigorous egalitarianism above all else to assure that the person that was ultimately elected president was truly decided by whom the majority of our country wanted as their president.
However, as I have aged out of the naiveté of my youth, I have become aware of the ugly truth of the two-party system of American politics. These parties are diametrically opposed to one another, will stop at nothing to control who is elected and are willing to undermine equal representation to pursue their ulterior political agenda with no remorse.
The willingness of both American political parties, Republicans and Democrats, to bend the rules to protect their power in Congress is virtually commonplace. Gerrymandering is a practice where politicians intentionally draw voting district lines in a way that does not focus on equal representation but on creating favorable districts for their party members’ continued re-election.
This transparently corrupt practice undermines the possibility of having free and fair elections, yet it has somehow become an accepted and normative practice on both ends of the political spectrum.
This is not the only thing these political parties do to swing elections in their favor. They also both have governing committees, which essentially decide which candidate will get the endorsement and pulpit offered by the party regardless of what percentage of the popular vote the candidate is able to garner in the party’s primary.
The fact that these governing committees are used to protect, prioritize and propagate their political agenda rather than as an objective entity that nominates the most popular candidate from the party is a travesty. They fail to actually represent the wishes of the American people in presidential elections.
This has never been more apparent than through the Democratic Party’s suppression of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which has prevented him from becoming a viable candidate despite his broadband appeal to a largely centrist American public.
The Democratic National Committee, or DNC, has made exceptional efforts to ensure RFK and his views receive no exposure in any setting that it has control of.
The DNC canceled debates between President Joe Biden and the other primary candidates, which prevented any side-by-side comparison of Kennedy with Biden, whose qualification for the presidency is certainly in question.
The DNC deliberately prevented these debates from taking place because they know Biden could not do well in them, and rather than allowing that to be shown to the American public, who would subsequently reconsider re-electing him, they choose to obfuscate it from the public eye since they have chosen Biden as their poster child.
We need to restructure the way these governing committees are allowed to operate. They should not be able to change their election procedures because the candidate they want to get elected and use to achieve their goals is incapable of getting through the process. These governing committees serve the public and thus should be subjected to universal and objective modes of operation.
The unapologetic manner in which this is done drives me crazy. How can you be so convinced of the correctness of your agenda that you do not hesitate to actively suppress and eliminate voter support as a factor in candidate selection?
These committees need to be regulated, objectively operated and run by supervisors that are morally independent from the wants of the party to ensure that integrity to proper procedure is held.
I cannot believe that the best system we could come up with in a country of 365 million individuals uniquely composed of different opinions, thoughts and ideas was a two-party system where both parties can essentially just pick the candidate they want, change the election procedure at will and are unbounded to any obligation to represent the demands of the public that they serve.
The goal of a democracy is to engage in nuanced governmental action in a complicated world based on what the people of our country truly want, rather than only allowing the views of two opposed sides that are largely unrepresentative of the citizens of America to prevail as the only possible courses of action in policy decisions.
The American people have long suffered the effects of the myopic political landscape that exists as the result of the two-party system. These parties have become far more polarized in their opinions on issues than the average American, and as this continues, people withdraw from politics, as they feel that their priorities are utterly disregarded in the policies of the respective parties.
Politics is not college football. It is not my team versus yours. Political tribalism is an extremely harmful and pervasive political attitude that is destroying this country’s efficacy to make intelligent decisions to pave the way for a prosperous future in our country.
If politicians were making rational decisions based on their individual and independent assessments of situations, they would deviate from party opinions on at least some issues, which does not happen hardly ever. Most are just henchmen working as part of a cohesive whole which only desires power, control and conformity.
As a country, we have aged beyond this system. Its continued existence only degrades our strength as a nation and should be abolished so that the individuals of this country can regain true representation in our government. The two-party system oppresses the intelligence of the nuanced mind, which forms unique and thoughtful opinions that are not binary or perfectly in line with political parties.
My hope is that an independent candidate will generate a wide base of support, which would force the parties to retreat from their respective opposing poles on issues, meet the American people in the middle and expose the weakness that exists in this suffocating system.
