Lukas J. Myers
For many, this year’s election season seems to be like something straight out of dystopian literature. On one hand there is a loudmouthed fearmongering egomaniac with a hovering finger above the ‘Nuclear War’ switch. On the other hand there is a corrupt self-serving liar that shows about as much transparency as a windowless brick wall.
The major party nominees are both people with notoriously low public opinion numbers and notoriously high amounts of lawsuits and controversies on both of their plates.
Emerging from a palate of, at one point, 17 nominees for the Republican ticket is the notoriously foul-mouthed Donald Trump whose comments on minorities have been considered racist by some people, including Paul Ryan, a fellow Republican and public endorser of Mr. Trump.
From the left side of the ring checking in at 8 former years in the White House as first lady and four more years as Secretary of State in the Obama Administrations, is Hillary Clinton. Whose tens of thousands of emails filed from a personally owned server have followed her and whose participation and failures over a long political career have caused her to be considered a blatant liar and hypocrite.
Gone are the days of hopeful millennials wishing for Bernie Sanders to be the president of the United States. Gone, too, are the days of a possible contested convention in which John Kasich or Ted Cruz might muscle out a victory.
Alas might there be a sliver of hope inside of this Machiavellian hellscape in the form of parties not branded with an all too familiar elephant or donkey. Jill Stein of the Green Party seems the perfect option for us, or was that Gary Johnson of the Libertarians?
In a land where everything that a major party representative says is almost immediately labeled as libelous, slanderous, or else otherwise arguably fallacious these other parties must appear to be Godsends.
Except there are a couple of problems with this notion that the Green Party or the Libertarian Party will answer all of the needs of the American People.
What exactly is the appeal to the Libertarian Party? The Libertarians are a reactionary faction that rose up in response to certain legislation and to the platform of the still popular Republican Party. They tout social awareness as well as feasible economic awareness. In other words, they claim to be social liberals and economic conservatives.
On the surface this seems very viable and even congruent with their policy platform. However, a large part of the Libertarian platform and ideology is the ridding of many or most government aid services. Including things like social security and food assistance programs. Getting rid of those programs would actually cause large amounts of social discord and could be argued to be socially immoral in general.
The Green Part, or “Greens” as they are commonly called are considered to be even further left than the current Democratic Party and much more environmentally driven. To some concerns about the environment are more important than anything in this age of Global Warming. With a priority on Green Energy and Social Liberalism that parallels successes in European countries the Green Party is a pretty appealing concept.
However, Jill Stein is far from perfect herself. She has been quoted in the past as saying several things that science largely accepts as false such as the concept that GMO are unsafe to eat or that vaccines have caused autism.
Despite the problems with third party candidates they may still appear more capable, or at least favorable, to Mr. Trump or Former Secretary Clinton. Which has made social media awash with the phrased meme “If everyone who said they wished they had a third option on the ballot, voted for me; I’d win”. This very phrase has been uttered by Gary Johnson’s campaign many times and has been said in some fashions by Jill Stein.
This brings us to another problem in the political mish-mash of the American Political Machine, the above claim is actually probably untrue. Despite the fact that, yes, there are huge unfavorability ratings amongst both Clinton and Trump, both the Democrats and Republicans have huge constituencies full of fiercely loyal voters. Which in turn means Clinton and Trump both have fiercely loyal constituencies. Even if those constituencies are voting for their party, not for their presidential candidate.
This makes it not only likely that we will see a Trump or Clinton Administration, but that any vote to the contrary would ultimately be just a vote in protest. The farthest that any candidate has gotten outside of a major party in the last fifty years was Ralph Nader, who was a particularly famous and well liked politician who has since been known only for disrupting the election enough to cause a Democratic loss to George W. Bush.
That is not to say there is no point in launching that third party vote or issuing that write in, although to add insult to injury write in’s count for monopoly money in the state of Illinois. Just that all of this rhetoric of a triumphant third party, the year of the outsider, and the evils of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are probably significantly blown out of proportion.
No one running for political office is a true political outsider by definition they are advocating inside political discourse on a political platform on a political stage in front of all of the real political outsiders.
So for all the talk of Bernie or Bust and Third Party votes and Walls and Emails Americans find themselves in an almost paradoxical situation. One in which it is very easy to feel hopeless. Understand, though, that these principles that seem hopeless and pointless and like they make no difference are not.
Parties build their platforms based on the public opinion. That much has been clear enough with the outcome of the Bernie Sanders Campaign and their proclaimed revolution, the Democratic party adapted a much more liberal platform once it saw the support that it had.
So if someone sees this political paradox and helplessly feels as though everything needs to be different. Flip tables in the temple, march on Selma, or at the very least blog about it. Change only comes from those who reach out to others. American’s must lead the politicians by example and not let themselves be led by those who lead them.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
