How to break the two-party hold on American politics

The problem with the "no Kings" movement is that they have no idea what they are talking about, which I affirm as someone who has lived in monarchies (UK, Canada, and Belgium). 

The real issue is the duopoly, which is realy only one party pretending to be different. The duopoly is the tool of the oligarchy, which is disgustingly obvious if one wants to admit it.

The US needs new players and parties that actually represent the people.

What if America had More Political Parties? - TLDR News

There are many advantages to ending the duopoly, but I am not sure I would go with the parties and the leaders proposed by this. While I talk about the Westminster system, coalition governments are much better than the gridlock which is endemic to the US system.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is gone. No big loss.

You would think I would be in deep mourning about this, but you are wrong.

There hasn't been any truly public media in the US for a long time. Commercials made their way into the public broadcasting long ago in the form of "underwriting". Money owns the narrative, which is why third parties and renegades such as Bernie Sanders got little coverage. The duopoly happily owns the US media.

And US media has long been consolidated in the hands of a few. You didn't need much of a brain to figure out that there were no real dissenting opinion. That was until the internet set it free. Then Speaker's corner came to your computer instead of having to get a soap box in Hyde Park. Of course, the Internet isn't really moerated so anyone can pretty much say anything.

It's nice to have media that are moderated with varied and informed opinions, but the US doesn't have that.

People say that Trump will bring fascism to the US, but the US has never really been a truly liberal democracy. It's had its propaganda, and the US is the best in the world at doing it: see Paul Weber's Propaganda: Nobody Does It Better Than America.

After all, the US Constitution does start with the words "We the people..." despite it having been mostly written in secret!

American propaganda, however, is much cleverer. American propaganda, they patiently explained, relies entirely on emotional appeals. It doesn’t depend on a rational theory that can be disproved: it appeals to things no one can object to.

And the US's most obvious propaganda is called ADVERTISING!

But don't worry, the Internet allows access to all sorts of opinions other than those given on main stream media. And media consolidation may drive more people to those alternatives. 

Ones that are free of propaganda.

and advertising.

What If America Had More Than Two Parties?

One of the main reform which needs to happen before the US can truly see "democracy" (or a republic). I like to quote Julius Nyerere: "The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them." On the other hand, there needs to be different parties to avoid the consolidation of power caused by the duopoly.

And the there really isn't a difference between a democracy and a republic:

Well, other than the founders had an unrealistic idea that the Roman republic was somehow stable and democracy was the equivalent of nihilism.

Russell Brand on Tucker Declares WAR On Fox News

This is interesting. I wouldn't say that I am a total Tucker Carlson fan, but I did start watching him during the Covid. This is an interesting take on him and his show. I have to agree with this since I feel the same way as Russell Brand does and he makes a lot of very interesting points.

Woah, This Does NOT Look Good For Biden

Russell Brand hits the nail on the head about Biden, Trump, and the fake US elections. The stories about Biden's corruption would be everywhere if it had been Trump. 

Crickets for Biden. 

You can fix an election by controlling the information the voters have to make their decisions. 

And I don't trust the US media one bit.

Is PBS Credible anymore?

I am going to make a disclaimer that I believe in true public broadcasting, but US public broadcasting is commercial. It has commercials in the form of "underwriting" by large corporations, which is pretty much the same thing as being commercial. Yes, the fact that it is not free of big money influence make it a part of the rest of US media. Big business can threaten to take away its money and PBS is SCREWED--BIG TIME!

Which takes us to this clip from PBS News Hour where one of the commentators says "There hasn't been any obvious gaffes, big scandals, or anything like that."

Funny how Hunter's Laptop has been missing from the media (and I never heard back from Burisma about my job application).

It will probably also be missing again this election cycle (PBS shut off comments to this).

  

I should add that these two clowns are from the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos who would be eating 50 cent burritos if the duopoly wasn't in power and was whacked by someone vaguely like Bernie Sanders enforcing US competition laws.

I live in hope for that day.

But this gets to where Fox News is wrong: The Democrats are nowhere near left wing. In fact, the Republicans have also strayed from their true populist roots, which makes it even funnier when I read Shot in the Foot's blog: they might want to look up Minnesota Justice Harry Blackmun. Or even better, look up Richard Nixon's comments about firearms ownership.

As I like to say, I was rather shocked when I watched a documentary about Nixon (on PBS) and realised how lefty he seemed in the early 1990s!

Sorry for the digression, but US Politics has moved to the right. The Democratic Party has pretty much extinguished anything vaguely New Deal-Roosevelt, which means that someone like Bernie Sanders has no part in that party. Which is why I distrust anyone who claims to be to the left and is associated with that party. It cannot be fixed from within.

The reason that Biden is president is that he appeals to the big donors, which is why the Tech giants can deny the existance of Hunter's laptop and what it means to Joe Biden. So, that really wasn't that much of a digression. 

There isn't much of a "lefty media" in the US other than some things on the internet (E.g.: Real News Network and Democracy Now), but they don't have much of an audience. Which means we are left with Fox News and Sky News Australia who get only part of the story, and are taken about as seriously as Democracy Now.

I feel like someone in occupied Europe trying to get reliable information when I look at the US media because it isn't there.

"All the News fit to Print" is propaganda, or at least explains their editorial policy in that they only feel they need to print what they believe should be printed. 

And Hunter's laptop and associated scandal is nowhere to be seen.

The fun thing about not only not using US media, but moving to another language

French media is talking about this in a disinterested manner.

And pointing out how much the Democrats have blown it with continuing their witch hunt on Trump while ignoring their own problems, which I'm not going to bother mentioning if you aren't aware of them by now.

This story is only "à la un" on the broadcast media. The print media are like the Private Eye "Heir of Sorrows" series where it listed off headlines from the British dailies. In this case, the French are concerning themselves with issues of French interest.

That is pretty much the strike relating to the change in retirement regulations making people have to wait longer to retire.

And you wonder why I prefer Europe to the US. Especially when the US has become a banana republic having to resort to political prosecutions instead of addressing the issues it needs to. The partisanism is totally disgusting to me.
 

I'm not sure how true this is, but...

I was told the French government subsidises newspapers, which is an interesting concept if it is
true. Although, I was under the impression I was reading a wider variety of viewpoints then just centrist. I read the following: Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, L'Express, and L'Obs. The first three being dailies and the last two are weeklies. This list puts me at being left of centre in French/European politics.

On the other hand, I am extreme fringe left in the United States being aligned with Bernie Sanders. I find my home in the US with the Green Party and Democratic Socialists. I'm trying to figure out which party comes closest when I start looking at European politics, which gets interesting since some things which are called "Socialist" in the US are taken for granted in European politics. In fact, trying to take them away would make one an incredibly unpopular candidate.

But the US doesn't talk about how overworked it is until someone mentions that Europeans usually start a job with 3 weeks of vacation and work up. They also don't work more than 40 hours a week.

It's things like that that make me question the 2020 election where people were prevented from working, yet a candidate who talked about not living in fear during a period of enforced unemployment lost the election. Things like Universal Basic Income make sense when someone is told they cannot work. Likewise, so does having housing and medical care paid for.

On the other hand, it is easier to play the ad hominem card of "that candidate/party/person is a progressive..." when it's obvious that the term doesn't really apply when one properly looks at the issues.

As I like to say, if the Democratic Party were as socialist or progressive as the right/Fox news likes to claim: wouldn't it have made sense to run Bernie Sanders instead of the candidates who they did run????  Of course, Fox news would be even more embarassed since it seems that Sanders was popular on a town hall they ran.

Anyway, despite this I have to admit that I am blissfully ignorant of US politics, which was made apparent since I had no idea who Ketanji Brown Jackson was or what made up the US Supreme Court. For good reason, the institution is blatantly political. It makes decisions which are not really based in law.

And it fucking well doesn't need to.

I'm not sure if being a US Supreme Court Justice is something worthy of being: especially since it it is a purely political position. The reason I go by Laci is that someone joked that my dog had been in more courtrooms than Harriet Miers, which was probably true.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to pretend reverence for a document most people don't understand and is horrible out of touch with modern society. And they forget can be amended. Even though they say they like certain of the Amendments.

Yes, diversity is a good thing, especially if it is properly applied. 

Unfortunately, there isn't too much diversity in the marketplace of US ideas, despite the First Amendment. Which is why it is amusing to me that French Newspapers could be government subsidised.

An interesting interview with Jeffrey Sachs

I agree with him about the quality of the current debate: especially that opposing opinions tend to be ignored.

What you miss by being monolingual.

 The US really doesn't have much in the way of a balanced media.

So, it was really refreshing to see this interview with John McWhorter in L'Express: https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/idees-et-debats/john-mcwhorter-avec-sa-croyance-inebranlable-et-son-peche-originel-le-wokisme-est-une-religion_2165058.html

You can find English versions, but the French one is much more cutting about this movement.

You touch on a crucial point. There is certainly a form of theatricality in the way some blacks claim a place, and that can be traced back to simplistic attitudes already in the early 1960s. But I really think that the black American leadership doesn't think about black people as elected officials: it's not part of the black tradition. I think that Black America thinks of itself through a very troubled history, still in the present, and that this idea that Black people should have a certain place is not an egocentric idea, but rather a fear. It comes from the fact that it can be difficult, as a black person, why you exist in the world. The relationship with Africa, it goes back centuries, it doesn't make sense anymore. We are not Africans. What do we have? It is very difficult to think collectively in such a situation. For me, it's very important that we understand this because indeed, this aspect of black activism can be very irritating. But it comes from a deep insecurity. 

I find it interesting that Prof. McWhorter is a professor of Creole Studies and isn't offering the Western Alternative to Africa: Creole culture. The slaves made their own traditions in the Western Hemisphere.

While the narrative is that blacks "were stolen from Africa", the reality is that they were sold into bondage by other Africans (e.g., Mali Empire and Benin). Slavery has been part of African culture from Ancient times. Blaming white people won't change that.

US black culture is also not monolithic as is seen by examples like Prof. McWhorter.

It takes two parties to Gerrymander

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that Le Monde would blame the Republicans for the problems in US politics, while not criticising Joe Biden (Le sommet pour la démocratie de Joe Biden a déçu). In fact, France has a lot of nerve pointing fingers at the US since both countries have similar problems in their political systems. The problem is that the US's duopoly system is a lot better at hiding the differences by using "hot-button", "Culture wars" issues which are fairly meaningless.

The nice thing is that people in the US are so heavily propagandised and insular that they don't know the difference. Although, one clue is that propaganda is visceral--it works to stir the emotions and short circuit logic. The US is good at propaganda since it has the advertising industry.

Unfortunately, a victim of the mindless, "hot-button" politics is any sense of political compromise as the situation becomes "US" versus "THEM". Bernie Sanders is frightening since Fox News listeners hear him in person and LIKE his policies. Greg Gutfeld lost any cred with me when he went on an ad hominem attack on Sanders.

Sorry, Greg, that shit is the sign of a loser.

Other victims are the media and information in general. I mentioned I was listening to Fox News, in particular Tucker Carlson, but that was because there is no dissent in the other levels of the US media. That's because the media are pretty much monopolised and can control the message worse than any governmental agency.

The problem with US politics is not the Democrats or the Republicans: it's the duopoly system which refuses to let any other party make any progress.

See also:

How the US Propaganda System Works

Thoughts on US Third Parties.

This comes from watching the French election, which is a similar legislative-executive system to the US.  I will also admit to voting Green from a disgust with the US duopoly (i.e., the Democrats and Republicans) and its stranglehold on the system.
In a way Dan Savage is correct, the third parties should be running candidates lower down the ticket, in particular for the legislature. That is because a third party would be more effective in pushing its agenda there, or at least in blocking other parties from pushing theirs. It is more effective to be a spoiler/fixer in the legislature than in an election.  Third parties will become a force to be reckoned with once they demonstrate they have power, but they need to be the force to do what the obstructionists in congress have been doing. Or to thwart the obstruction.
One of the Clintonista/Democrat talking points was that the party is a coalition of various political views, but the duopoly parties are failed coalitions.  In some ways, they have become titular left-right parties, although I would argue any difference is more in appearance and relation to hot button issues (e.g. abortion and gun control [1]).  The past election showed how detrimental relying upon hot button issues is to real issues (e.g., the environment).
Third parties are good for keeping politics real. Case in point are the presidential debates which are no longer run by the League of Women Voters.  The president of the LWV, Nancy M. Neuman, denounced this action when the LWV ceased having any real control over the debates:

"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions," Neuman said. "The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."
Neuman said that the campaigns presented the League with their debate agreement on
September 28, two weeks before the scheduled debate. The campaigns' agreement was negotiated "behind closed doors" and vas presented to the League as "a done deal," she said, its 16 pages of conditions not subject to negotiation.
Most objectionable to the League, Neuman said, were conditions in the agreement that gave the campaigns unprecedented control over the proceedings. Neuman called "outrageous" the campaigns' demands that they control the selection of questioners, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press and other issues.
"The campaigns' agreement is a closed-door masterpiece," Neuman said. "Never in the history of the League of Women Voters have two candidates' organizations come to us with such stringent, unyielding and self-serving demands."
Neuman said she and the League regretted that the American people have had no real opportunities to judge the presidential nominees outside of campaign-controlled environments.

lwv.org/press-releases/league-refuses-help-perpetrate-fraud
I would that change is drastically needed in US politics, particularly its system of elections, but that will not come as long as the duopoly holds power.
I have pointed out that the Electoral College needs to be abolished, yet the fact that Clinton's "loss" was due to her failing to secure enough votes in the Electoral College is again overlooked and substituted for blame on everything except the existence of that body (as was the case in 1990).  Both times the "losers" won the popular vote.
Of course, abolition of the Electoral College is only one thing in what is probably a long wish list of electoral reforms needed in the US:

open debates run by an impartial body like the League of Women Voters, shorter election cycles, open primaries, ranked choice voting, return of the fairness doctrine and equal time rule (Trump used the lack of it to get shitloads of free publicity), campaign finance reform--if not publicly funded campaigns, easier access to the ballot for parties, reform or abolish the electoral college, end gerrymandering, handcounted paper ballots or receipts, and I am sure that is only the beginning.

While one can dream that there will be internal change, it doesn't seem likely since the parties still seem entrenched in the same behaviours which have led to the US political system being the disaster it is.
OK, we also need to add in media consolidation here since it is one way the "state" can get away with  form of censorship, but only allowing one message to get out.  Also controlling any opposing voices.
Any real change has to come through the system since violence will backfire and result in the wrong type of change.  Thus any dissenting parties best chance has to be to try and thwart the duopoly and use the duopoly's power against it.
Change has to come, but it must come by using the system to gain power and then force change.
[1] This is not to say gun control is not important (or abortion), but these issues have been used to get people to vote against their interests.  Neither is one of left and right, but of public welfare and safety.