After Ross Perot I never voted for a republican or democrat again because it made me realize how corrupt the duopoly is. I've come to agree with George Washington in that parties are a danger. They are private organizations that have been given total control of our elections. And a viable 3rd party will not be allowed. If any 3rd party somehow rose to a level of interest they would just buy it too. We need to move away from parties altogether.
Thanks for the opportunity to re-post, or cross-post, a relevant comment posted to a recent Off-Guardian article on this subject 🙏:
________________________________________
I suppose that hardly anyone remembers Ralph Nader’s dubious 2009 “thought experiment” meditation, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” It was a work of fiction, which Nader described as a “practical utopia”.
I never read it, but watched interviews (e.g. "Democracy Now") in which Nader explained that the gist of his idealistic vision is that Nader (no pauper himself) personally knew “super-rich” individuals who were patriotic and altruistic citizens, not malignant predatory wealth/powermongers. He speculated that if a nucleus or cadre of such virtuous super-rich citizens used their considerable wealth and influence to promote sociopolitical reforms, it might just have the clout to successfully challenge the corrupt and decadent Establishment.
In 1995, super-rich Ross Perot founded The Reform Party of the United States of America (RPUSA), generally known as the Reform Party USA or the Reform Party, as a “centrist political party” appealing to the plurality of US citizens fed up with the Democratic/Republican duopoly. It quickly became the stuff of history.
Now super-rich Musk is promising, or threatening, to repeat this performance. I’m sure that loyal Musk fans and admirers will scoff at the comparison and parallel. They will argue that younger, more “dynamic” Musk has resources and charisma orders of magnitude greater than Perot. We were only waiting for this moment to arrive!
But even the flashy Musk’s persona and popularity seem to have reached a point of diminishing returns lately. And that’s only one problem. For reasons that are too extensive to reduce to comment-length (even for me!), for structural reasons a “maverick” third party can never acquire enough momentum to achieve political escape velocity. (No disrespect to the Peace & Freedom Party intended. ☮)
So, Musk’s proposed new third party is just another sociopolitical MacGuffin: “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion, and within the story is considered extraordinarily meaningful or valuable despite it lacking actual intrinsic value or importance“.
Of course, if Musk actually pursues this chimera, it will generate sensational mass-media (including social media) coverage for a while. Trump's apoplectic, ballistic, semi-literate "Truth Social" fulminations alone will keep dumbed-down public discourse at a rolling boil indefinitely.
This will end anticlimactically, when the capricious Musk soon tires of this latest crusade, abruptly washes his hands of it, and walks away. 🤨
After Ross Perot I never voted for a republican or democrat again because it made me realize how corrupt the duopoly is. I've come to agree with George Washington in that parties are a danger. They are private organizations that have been given total control of our elections. And a viable 3rd party will not be allowed. If any 3rd party somehow rose to a level of interest they would just buy it too. We need to move away from parties altogether.
Thanks for the opportunity to re-post, or cross-post, a relevant comment posted to a recent Off-Guardian article on this subject 🙏:
________________________________________
I suppose that hardly anyone remembers Ralph Nader’s dubious 2009 “thought experiment” meditation, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” It was a work of fiction, which Nader described as a “practical utopia”.
I never read it, but watched interviews (e.g. "Democracy Now") in which Nader explained that the gist of his idealistic vision is that Nader (no pauper himself) personally knew “super-rich” individuals who were patriotic and altruistic citizens, not malignant predatory wealth/powermongers. He speculated that if a nucleus or cadre of such virtuous super-rich citizens used their considerable wealth and influence to promote sociopolitical reforms, it might just have the clout to successfully challenge the corrupt and decadent Establishment.
In 1995, super-rich Ross Perot founded The Reform Party of the United States of America (RPUSA), generally known as the Reform Party USA or the Reform Party, as a “centrist political party” appealing to the plurality of US citizens fed up with the Democratic/Republican duopoly. It quickly became the stuff of history.
Now super-rich Musk is promising, or threatening, to repeat this performance. I’m sure that loyal Musk fans and admirers will scoff at the comparison and parallel. They will argue that younger, more “dynamic” Musk has resources and charisma orders of magnitude greater than Perot. We were only waiting for this moment to arrive!
But even the flashy Musk’s persona and popularity seem to have reached a point of diminishing returns lately. And that’s only one problem. For reasons that are too extensive to reduce to comment-length (even for me!), for structural reasons a “maverick” third party can never acquire enough momentum to achieve political escape velocity. (No disrespect to the Peace & Freedom Party intended. ☮)
So, Musk’s proposed new third party is just another sociopolitical MacGuffin: “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion, and within the story is considered extraordinarily meaningful or valuable despite it lacking actual intrinsic value or importance“.
Of course, if Musk actually pursues this chimera, it will generate sensational mass-media (including social media) coverage for a while. Trump's apoplectic, ballistic, semi-literate "Truth Social" fulminations alone will keep dumbed-down public discourse at a rolling boil indefinitely.
This will end anticlimactically, when the capricious Musk soon tires of this latest crusade, abruptly washes his hands of it, and walks away. 🤨