Blog 06: The Two-Party System

What do I mean by the “Two-Party System?”

I think it’s obvious that I mean the “left” vs. the “right” when I say the “two-party system.” The Democrats vs. the Republicans, the liberals vs. the conservatives. I’m not gonna beat around the bush; I have a huge bone to pick with this setup.

No matter what side you’re on, I’m sure that you believe the other side to be mindless, cult-following idiots. That’s the exact problem I have with it. It’s always you vs. them. It is, at the end of the day, separation.

Before you tell me why I’m a complete fool, I’d like to reference someone who first made me think about why this is bad: George Washington. (Now, I’m not saying the man was a Saint. He did spme pretty amazing things, but he also did some pretty bad things. That’s history. But I can promise that he’s more credible than your average civilizan in 1776.) He was extremely against the two-party system. In fact, he made an effort to remain neutral during the French Revolution when the Democrats and Republicans were scrambling to pick sides and find allies (Again, remaining neutral is oftentimes a dick move. In the words of System of a Down, “We can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train!!!”). All in all, Washington said that the two-party system only weakens the government and turns people against each other. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the government, but I hate it when people don’t listen to each other.

That’s pretty much why I don’t like it. It turns people against each other; when people are against each other, they don’t listen to each other. They are seperated by restrictive labels. People become absolutely deluded when they’re slapping a label on their forehead. By putting a label on yourself, you’re restricting your thinking to a certain way in order to still comply by it. This means that when the “opposing side” makes a great point that you would agree with under any other circumstance, you refuse to consider it just because it suits the side of your “opposition.” This makes us unable to grow past the label and stunts our mental growth as people. To learn, you have to expose yourself to things you would’ve have thought of before. This includes things you disagree with. This is why I think people can be so smart and then say the stupidest thing ever just because it goes along with their political party. The two-party system divides and weakens us. We were all children once; we all watched the same shows about how coming together makes us stronger. This metaphorical absoluteism leads people to forgetting their own humanity. They love their party and hate the other one; they grow to think their party could never be wrong and the other one could never be right. We lose sight of empathy and humility.

At the end of the day, we’re all people.

This isn’t the most existential article I’ve ever written, but it’s a relevant issue that I’ve been thinking about and I really hope that this quick read can make a couple people open their minds a bit. You know what they say: a little goes a long way.

If you want to read more about how labels divide us, I HIGHLY recommend reading this article written by Cayce: It's Physical Neurose (or, On Neurodivergents and Libel whoops I mean Labels). She goes into much more detail than I'm willing to here; I really love how she highlights the importance of debate in it. I know I’m always recommending Cayce’s articles, but I cannot stress enough how amazing she is of an analyst and an activist. She is the best analyst I’ve ever seen in my life.