Listening to the rhetoric spewed back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans today, there is only one logical conclusion: we are idiots for electing any of them. The two dominant political parties, with the help of the media, have sold the American people on the lie that we all see everything in black and white, that we are all either liberal or conservative, with no middle ground possible on any issue.
From the conservative Republican viewpoint, they are the true defenders of God, country and the American way of life, while the Democrats are godless, America-hating communists who would happily hand us over to any number of our enemies. If you disagree with the Republicans, in their eyes you are obviously unpatriotic.
From the liberal Democrats' point of view, they are the true defenders of civil liberties, the freedom to believe there is no God, and the American way of life, while the Republicans are war-mongering robber barons who want to set up a theocracy and destroy everyone who thinks for themselves. If you disagree with the Democrats, in their eyes you are a closed-minded bigot.
In most situations like this, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But neither party, both of which are elitist, self-serving, and holding on to power at whatever the cost. While abuses of power have always existed, the two parties have managed to hold on to their ability to abuse power the old fashioned way: by pitting us against each other. Leaving out for a moment the ever-present issue of Iraq, a foreign visitor observing our political process would think that all people in America care about is abortion and gay marriage. Ironically, these are the two issues least likely to ever personally affect the majority of us.
Yet the two parties trot these issues out every chance they get, and for good reason. In each camp there is a hard-core group that will take sides while the majority of us become so frustrated with the lack of attention to issued that really matter to us that we drop out of the political process entirely. Fewer voters means the Republicans and the Democrats can focus their attention and money on a smaller pool, thus the notion that "whoever turns out their base wins."
What neither party wants us to realize is that while they rattle their political sabers over moral issues and race and sexual orientation, the real issue is the same as it has always been: money. They are afraid that if we take our eyes off the diversion that race and religion and gender divide us, we might see what truly does divide us, not from each other, but from them.
The fact is, a Catholic man living in an overpriced house in Texas has a lot in common with a black Pentecostal woman living in a government housing project in Cleveland: they both lack healthcare, have no real savings, can't afford to pay for their children's college education, and often have to decide each month whether to pay the electric bill or the phone bill because there's not enough money to pay both.
If the Hispanic farm worker in California and the third-generation Vietnamese store owner in Boston stop and realize that they, like the majority of people in America, are one layoff or serious illness from being completely destitute while their "leaders" all make the list of America's millionaires, they might stop voting for the status quo and actually elect someone who is representative of us. And that scares the hell out of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
For all the talk of race, Congress has whites and blacks and Hispanics and Asians, and we now have an African-American President. For all the chest beating about gender inequality, there are a large number of women in both the House and the Senate, and the Speaker of the House is now a woman. Congress has Catholics and Protestants and Jews and even Muslims. What it lacks is anyone for whom the annual congressional salary of more that $150,000 represented a raise in pay over what they earned before being elected.
It is time to stop forming third parties based on civil liberties (the Libertarians) or environmental issues (the Greens); this only serves to further dilute our strength with no tangible results. It is time to form a viable third party around what really unites us: economic injustice. Much of the social injustice in America exists solely because people lack the economic power to fight it.
But even if this third party never becomes a reality, there is still something we can all do. The next time you walk into a voting booth (and the key is that we must all start actually voting), bypass the rich Republican and the rich Democrat that spent millions of dollars in special-interest money on their campaign. Pull the lever for the high school teacher or laid-off autoworker running as independents. Until we get people in Washington who are truly like us, we will continue to have no one who represents us. And we'll have only ourselves to blame.