perspectives | penfist

The political system in the United States is broken

I watched the first presidential debate of 2016 last night. Gross.

Why do I have to choose between a shady, back-room power deals career politician and a shady, back-room power deals career businessman? Both of them are liars. Both of them are flip-floppers. Both of them are power hungry. These are not qualities I can support in a leader.

Every logical fallacy I am aware of was at play in the debate last night. These two individuals are not the best choices to lead the United States for the next four years. We shouldn’t have to choose between two paragons of fail. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are not root causes. They are not the disease. They are the symptoms of a bigger problem.

The virus of the two-party system, where all opinions are slowly silenced until there are only two voices left. A system of decision making that offers only two choices is not healthy. The debate last night didn’t offer any real dialog about the problems average Americans face. It didn’t offer any real perspectives. That’s because, in the United States, minorities who aren’t bought are still silenced. That’s the real problem.

If you’re a socially progressive and fiscally conservative, like I am, there isn’t a real choice. If you believe politicians should be honest and responsible, you don’t have a real choice this election cycle. If you think government should operate transparently, always choosing to balance personal liberties with social infrastructure that demands personal responsibility, neither of these two is palatable.

They will both hoard power. They will both continue the vast, non-transparent, morally bankrupt security state we’ve been building since Sept. 11, 2001. We’ll keep using drones to extra-judicially murder those who, real or imagined, represent some sort of threat to this nation-state. All of our options will continue being boiled down into soundbites that lack any true substance. I can’t vote for that. I won’t vote for it. I don’t want to build a wall, and I don’t want to create more failed states like Libya and Syria in the name of the American people.

We owe it to ourselves to destroy the two-party system that offered up these two as our best hope for turning the ship before it collides with an iceberg named mediocrity.

I asked my girlfriend to register to vote. “It just feels like a waste of time,” she said. She’s right.

Until we manage to destroy the two-party system, this country is going to continue its downhill trajectory. It doesn’t matter which party wins in the upcoming election. The problem isn’t the candidates, it’s the system that offered them up as saviors.

One dark night the Hindu gods conspired with the Celtic ones and threw the reigning aristocracy out of Heaven. A few hours later Santa Claus woke up without his skin. An animated bag of bones with a ridiculous white beard attached to a skull face. His hunger had him looking for cookies and milk immediately but he’d been trapped in a maze that contained only cheese. The new kings and queens of the universe laughed merrily.

Kurma the tortoise banded together with Abandinus and created a funhouse atmosphere that would change everything. Jesus appeared with a chainsaw and a mask. He ran around madly revving it loudly, unable to control himself. The Easter Bunny showed up with hand grenades painted in bright colors and covered with various types of glitter. Satan was made to follow behind on a leash carrying resupplies for the large rabbit. The grenades exploded in great bursts of smoke that turned into scriptural passages from the holy books of the conquered and then blew away in the wind.

Borrum blew his mighty breath out and sprinkled broken evergreens and firs across all the world’s deserts. Matsya got up to mischief when he saw what was happening and moved all the world’s fresh water around to new places. Thing that had been wet were dry and the dry places drowned. Chaos grew roots and sprouted everywhere.

It was a real party when the golems showed up with bag of presents for everyone. The big black rock in Mecca turned into an inflatable funhouse when the conspiracy really got rolling. The wall that wails started laughing in an eerie timbre and didn’t stop. The Temple Mount suddenly sported a large amusement park run by the former angels, demons, djinns and saints of the overthrown big three.

Things became a horrific carnival when The Morrígan showed up and set up a series of elimination matches for the heroes of the vanquished mythologies. Iblis and Skeleton Claus were matched against Abraham and several lesser Bene Elohim and the sands of the recently rebuilt Colosseum in Rome flowed with blood.

That Halloween shook everything up. It would have meant certain destruction for all humanity if Danu and Durga hadn’t stopped the farce. In their mothering ways, they finally convinced the rest of the long oppressed and alienated victors of Heaven to settle down and let the people worship as they pleased. As a conciliatory gesture it was decided that Santa Claus would remain a skeleton ever after to remind the people not to throw out their old gods so easily when shiny new ones came along.

All the holidays and holy sites were moved around so that people would be forced to take a fresh look at their beliefs. It was less than a month before a whole new pantheon of gods appeared out of nowhere and started fomenting trouble. As they approached Heaven to argue for equal rights for all gods, Skeleton Santa watched and sighed. He wouldn’t be getting his milk and cookies anytime soon.