By Ezra Reis
-Opinion-
The United States needs a viable third political party and a better system.
Our current system is set up not for the benefit of “We the People,” but rather for the benefit of the wealthy and corporate concerns.
We demand a system of government where the incentive in Washington is not purely financial but about what the concept of public service purports to be about: serving the public.
If the events of Jan. 6 have taught us anything it’s that actual armed rebellion is not going to change the status quo in Washington, D.C.
The only way we are going to see real change in our society is if we start requiring candidates to actually represent us rather than corporate concerns. It’s the only way to do this is outside of the strict partisan confines of red vs. blue.
If you’re sick and tired of the current paradigm; then this is the election where if your guy won, I beg you not to just go to sleep; and this is not the election to go to the shooting range if your guy lost.
Some of you may want a civil war, but if nobody around you is ready for one – and I assure you that is currently the case in the United States – all you get is a bunch of drunks spewing words. Sound familiar? Do we want to travel that road again? That's how the Nazi party began gaining international attention in Munich in 1923 and we all should know and fear what happened from there.
As the month of January began, we knew the electoral college had yet to meet for its ceremonial chore of actually confirming Joe Biden’s election of the prior November. Many of us hoped something would happen and Congress would instead miraculously choose to set aside the results of the election, while the rest of us have looked at those people as though they were all morons for not automatically accepting the results as dictated by our demigods in the Associated Press office in New York – of an exceptionally close election.
As though our national press is even remotely respectable after acting so one-sided during the Trump administration and the daily clown-show that was the Russiagate myth.
As we’ve now come to finally realize, after all of the media pounding into our heads’ the joke that our elections are somehow amongst the fairest in the world? Nope.
We are ranked #61 in election integrity — the second-lowest in the world for all liberal Democracies — and falling! The entire European Union runs a much better system of elections than America. Great Britain has a system that at the very least holds the Parliament in line.
Canada has a system which is much fairer than ours, even if their results don’t always turn out too much better (at least on the intellectual side of things.) Heck, even Russia (#47) runs cleaner elections than the United States!
Does it do anybody in office any good whatsoever to acquiesce to a demand for fairer elections? No. These crooks got elected in this environment; the only types of changes they like are the one’s favoring incumbents.
Which leaves us with two roads we could travel. We could go down the familiar path, say to ourselves “OK, let’s give Biden four years to make things ‘better,’” and go back to our normal period of sleep for the next two years. That would allow the crooks in our government the time to organize and raise funds without us present in the process.
Or we could organize ourselves, as is our tradition, particularly here in The Rocks. We’ve had a long tradition of organizing in times of need. We now need to spend our time and money on a third party. It might be our last chance to save democracy as we know it!