Episode 39: Election Day (A Two-Party Checkover)

Election Day.

In a land where voting has become the symbol of virtue, Cring suggests that perhaps the true virtue lies in questioning voting.

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In the spring of my senior year of high school, back when Latin was still being taught and the first picture of a female vagina you ever saw was in your freshman health class, two of the cheerleaders decided they wanted to hold one final party and invite everyone.

They started out working together, but then they had a fight, so instead of holding one party, it became two. Marcia was holding one and Marie the other.

You couldn’t go to both parties. They were planned to be held at the same time. And it was made clear—if you were going to Marcia’s party, you were not welcome at Marie’s, and if you planned to slip into Marcia’s party after going to Marie’s, she made it clear—she had spies.

It was unacceptable NOT to join one of the parties. So, the gamesmanship was on:

PARTY PLANNING

Decorations, a menu of what they were going to serve, even a line-up of the music that would be played for dancing.

PARTY THEMES

Marcia’s theme was, “One Last Time Before We Depart.” Marie’s theme was, “We Are Seniors—Let’s Go Out in Style.”

PARTY FAVORS

If you went to Marcia’s party, you got free tickets to a movie, a neat hat and homemade saltwater taffy. Marie offered the same things, but she also gave a coupon for forty percent off on jeans at the Lazarus Department Store. Our attendance was being bought, which leads to the final part of this party planning.

PARTY PRIDE

People started becoming proud that they were going to Marcia’s party or Marie’s party, so it no longer was about fun. People started attacking each other. By the time the parties happened, everybody was so uptight about who was going to go where and who was going to do what that the actual experience was a bomb.

Long, long ago in this country, when most people made their living by planting seeds, we came up with the idea of representative government. That meant that since you couldn’t go to Washington, D.C. and probably would never even see Washington, D.C. you voted for someone to represent you in Washington D.C. He was like you. He represented your interests and your desires. That was the thought.

But see, here was the problem—he had to get a lot of votes to get elected, so he made a lot of promises. And most of those promises could not be kept. So, you weren’t represented very well.

Now if you stop and think about it, you probably would not give somebody the authority to represent you to go buy your groceries.

How about to buy a new car?

To purchase a house for you?

To decide where you kids should go to college?

No, you wouldn’t want to be represented in any of these situations. But you will meekly go to the polls and vote for someone you probably have never personally met—mainly because you are part of his party and that party offers you the best favors and chance to express your pride.

The end result? A stranger goes to a strange city with other strange people in a strange environment and ends up doing strange things.

He is corrupted. She is corrupted. Because the system is corrupted.

Our forefathers could not envision a possibility where the American people could weigh in more frequently on the issues at hand simply because there was no Internet. Hell, there was no telegraph.

So, everything about this system that we keep promoting and advertising is outdated and has proven through several elections, to be unreliable to express the actual will of the people.

Yet we continue to hound civilians on the responsibility of voting, when many times the conclusion has already been determined simply based upon the way the regions are set up and the districts are divided. What should we do?

I will propose a very simple plan.

We should do away with the two-party system, and we should let individuals present their resumes for the job of representative, or even President, based upon their experience.

Then their policies should be presented and read aloud in front of the American people, and rather than having debates, there would simply be a clearing of the air over the issues.

Then the American people in each state would state their wishes via the Internet to their representative in Washington, or to the President, and a true Democracy could be enacted based upon an appreciation of the issues, as they are shared without attacking the other party, and given to the people factually. There could be private organizations to compare the various plans, so the people could vote intelligently.

There would be no need for polling place, and no need whatsoever for billions of dollars to be spent on television smear campaigns, and just as we will not accept a two-party check at a bank, we should bank on the fact that a two-party system is equally as unreliable.

In the American form of democracy, the party planning, the party theme, the party favors and the party pride have become more important than the people’s wishes, the people’s need, the people’s heart and the people’s mission.

What we have is an oligarchy–a bunch of high-minded, highly funded, highly-bred, often highly-educated and highly promoted individuals who feel they are smarter than the American people and will do almost anything to get voted in, so they can go to Washington and support whatever is being pushed by the highest bidder. So, to a certain degree, the most noble thing to do in this country is to STOP voting—until what we vote really has the power to speak.

Marcia and Marie’s parties were failures because they stopped being about the people and ended up being about the party itself.

The America two-party system is a joke because it doesn’t represent the will of the people, but rather, the whim of a party that is more concerned about its image than the progression of the common good.

You can ignore everything I’ve said in this podcast. You can make fun of the ideas, and I would be unoffended.

But to continue to think that your vote makes a difference—because the bureaucrats in this country want to dupe the people into believing they have power—well, that just leaves you looking ridiculous.

The good news is, people should have a right to hear the truth about the standing on an issue without having it promoted or pushed.

The better news is, since we have the ability to instantaneously hear from millions of people all at once, we could actually produce more of a pure Democracy.

It works for the voting on American Idol and The Voice.

Why not our government?