I was lying awake (as I sometimes do) at 4AM on September 14th. I don’t know why, but I was thinking about how stupid our party system is in the United States. I believe it started with some thoughts about how fractured our country is, and then in looking (as one looks in their brain) for the source, I couldn’t trace it simply to the divisiveness of our current president. Sure, that’s the most obvious current version, but what about the mere existence of the parties themselves? Put simply, this dude, and others before him, have come into office without people like me (a registered democrat) having been able to participate in the entire process for the other largest party in the country. Instead, for all of us, it has to be a last minute, “oh, you picked this guy (or gal, for at least we’ve been smart enough to put a woman on the final ballot).”
How stupid is that?
I think one of the reasons for my brain going there early morning was a back-and-forth my uncle Art had the other day on social media with a Nebraskan Senator, who happens to be republican. This senator (and my uncle to some extent) gets the concept of “for the good of the country,” and tosses aside (to the extreme) the “since it’s what my party would say, it’s right (no pun in intended).” So, in the moment I read (and reacted to, which I’m sure the Senator saw, which is kind of cool) that exchange, I said to myself, “I could vote for him.” But in that same moment, I realized 2 important facts:
- Actually, if we’re talking the presidential office, I couldn’t vote for him, or any other republican I liked, until it was likely too late in the process. And even worse:
- The top republican influencer has been working hard to make sure that nobody could vote for another republican in the upcoming primaries
How stupider is that?
Actually, I’d like to make one more side point on #2. That moment, which happened in the last 2 weeks, when there was a signficant move towards canceling enough primaries to make them essentially meaningless, was one of the most telling, and devastating (IMO) in all of the madness that has transpired. Without going too much off course, it’s baffling that there wasn’t a deafening outcry from moderate republicans – or from the entire country for that matter – on that topic. In order of priority, shouldn’t these people be fighting: 1) republicans who align closely with their party but not, for whatever reason (I’m not going there in any detail) to the current president 2) republicans who, even if they do like the current president, believe in a process of putting the best candidate, which could theoretically be someone else, forward and 3) anyone else who feels strongly enough about democracy so as not to guide the process towards one and away from dozens of prospective others. (side/side note: at some point I had the vision of starting another viral hashtag about #therightsideofhistory which just spoke to the correct ways of reacting to all the things going on right now in our country, putting aside party lines. This topic would have been a good one to surface as it relates to that imaginary hashtag).
I digress, big time.
So, that’s when my mind went to the next logical step: screw the parties…which was responded to with (and no, I wasn’t talking out loud) ‘but how do you screw the parties when they’re ingrained in the process?’
This part becomes a little squishy (which happened to be my word of the week, ask my employee with the initials KT if you don’t believe me; I literally used it on 4 meetings with various clients). Bear with me, but my solution is to create a Human Party. Yes, my smart friends and family will ask “you’re creating a new party to combat your perceived concerns with the party system?” Right. But, this is how I get there:
- Screw what people have prescribed as all the dozens of fluctuating characteristics of our 2 main parties. Truly, screw them (ear muffs, I might say “screw” a few more times in this post). Like, why wouldn’t their just be the best characteristics of both parties, that would make the best candidate to help govern our country?
- Heck, while we’re at it, screw the concept of a Green Party and some others too. Like, why wouldn’t all parties have shades of green at this point?
- OK independents (ironically my uncle among them), you’re definitely onto something. But I think we should be a bit more specific than that…read on.
A Human Party would simply be the putting forth the best humans for the job. Yeah, Pollyanna (borrowing my uncle’s word), I totally get it, but also if we all look deep down in our souls, we know that’s what is needed, ESPECIALLY NOW.
Party Line #1
My sister literally said in the past few months that she thinks our planet has DECADES to survive at this pace. She didn’t make that up…many scientists are saying it. Seems like a case where the best human would be making that a pretty high area of focus. They wouldn’t simply jump into fixes, but rather he or she would be first making sure we were both using the information already gathered and significantly funding the pursuit of all the information we need. Using that effectively (and efficiently, as time is of the essence) gathered information, this person (and individuals, which is a good time to remind you that this diatribe isn’t simply a presidential one) would put in place the methods for reversing, or at least stabilizing the trends of our declining planet. Hey, if this aligns with the Green Party, there’s my apology for saying screw you.
Party Line 2
Let’s talk also for a moment about all the hate in the country and the world. Wouldn’t a decent human pursuit be “less hate.” Yeah, “more love” is way too ambitious for now…maybe becomes the next party line. Right now, you don’t have to look far to find hate. Luckily, humans are mostly sufficiently properly (3 consecutive adverbs, how fun) docile to relegate their hate to online mediums. In fact, that has become a weirdly ironic stress release…like a virtual punching bag. (Note that I don’t use it as such, unless you think this post is hateful). However, that “mostly” above deserves an asterisk bigger than my house. Here’s what I mean:
*Even if we say that humans are 99.9% docile, that still leaves 7.7 million in the world, and 330,000 in the United States, that aren’t.
me, having done 2 minutes of math
I’m not a scientist but I’ve seen enough hateful people to know that they are capable of making a bigger impact than your average docile person. This exacerbates itself in some less damaging ways, such as the time a furious pitcher charge me (physically) for what he thought was “shooting the middle” in softball (dude, I was just swinging the bat, why would I actually try to hurt you…oh yeah, that’s right there are hateful people in the world that would). And then, of course there’s the most obvious acts of hatred that fill the stories on whatever news source you’re going to today (feel free to discount some of it as fake if that’s your thing).
Party Line #3
And yes, now that we’ve done the right things for our planet, and we’re hating less, we should probably spend some time focusing on helping us all live better. Holy hell if that isn’t the biggest vaguest broadest (mixing in 3 superlatives this time) phrase you’ve ever seen: “helping us all live better.”
- Is “us all” only the United States? A member of the Human Party might argue that it isn’t…although they might say that we have to focus more (not exclusively) on helping ourselves if we’re going to be truly able to help others
- Who defines “better?” A member of the Human Party might argue that it isn’t up to one person to define what is better for the other. But, if a position of trust is established, I bet that we could find out.
OK, this is getting long, but I’ve already put in place 3 characteristics of a Human Party: 1) gives a serious crap about saving our planet 2) hates less and 3) wants to help us all live better
If any of this resonated, let me leave you with a bit more hope of a utopia. Even if, years from now, nothing has changed and we still have this ridiculous party system hell bent on pretending we’re all different, we already have a mechanism for making something like The Human Party possible:
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(no, I didn’t forget to wrap up my post, that’s “write in” line for the ballot)