Outdated Two-Party System In US – OpEd
America, known for “absolute” freedoms andthe liberty for human and societal development, has a limited democracy as it provides for just two political parties to contest the presidential poll. Both parties, Democrat and Republican, have a similar ideology and agenda, which while to advance the so-called national interests, they secretly coordinate their operations globally.
Fundamentally speaking, these political parties do not have any serious differences in all respects. They just pretend to be rivals and fighting for power to control the world. The Sept-hoax has removed all minor differences, if at all any, between Republicans and Democrats as they speak now with one voice – American voice.
This American voice promotes capitalism and imperialism with military back up as American and global duty. This voice has no sympathy for the poor and common people. Both of them are ultra right-wing and essentially anti-people, controlled by corporate monopoly interest. It shields the corporate crimes against the common people.
How can a country like USA with a mere two parties to represent people of a large nation like America really talk about democracy?
The millions of dead, wounded and displaced Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans and Syrians are the victims of this endless and escalating US war drive, with many millions more to follow. By taking due cue from US imperialism, Israel and India attack Muslims in the neighborhoods The carnage will not be stopped by mere negotiations but USA and Israel are not ready even for the talks.
Spending too much on US military equipment has cost welfare schemes for the poor and less privileged ones very dearly as only the corporate lords and rich can fully enjoy life, US policy of militarism as a key tool for invasions, has enabled the pentagon to invade or attack many Arab nations like the global fascist leader, destabilizing them and killing millions of Muslims. The resultant refugee crises have made life of people difficult tin neighboring nations. In fact, entire West is in distress, except Israel, the main ally of USA in the region and a terrorist state killing the Palestinians by regular terror attacks for fictitious reasons.
Democracy is defined by the number of political parties and political freedoms the people enjoy. Multiple political parties provide a high level democracy and allow all possible many freedoms of expression to the citizens and others living in a country.
Conversely, lesser the number of political parties the weaker the democratic foundations of a given society where people suffer for want of availability of channels of expression. Under such weak democratic arrangement, people must suffer.
Constitution must provide for space for freedom of speech so that people enjoy it as their fundamental right rather than as a privilege or generosity of the state apparatus.
Communist countries do not allow any scope for more than one party and the Communist party remains the ruling party forever, until the people remove that from power and replace it by another by promulgating a multiparty system. Erstwhile Soviet Russia and China, many other communist/socialist governments did not let a second party, other than Communist party, to emerge in the country.
America and its allies in the West had called communist system as being totalitarian and authoritarian and monopoly enterprise. They boasted too much about the virtues of capitalism and imperialism as opposed to communism. Denial of certain basic rights in Soviet Union and China were used by the west as a useful tool to boost the image of western nations. However, if one looks at how far genuinely democratic the USA is, one would know Americans also do not enjoy basic political rights.
Americans are “enjoying” the 2016 US presidential election campaign now under way in the form of primaries that eventually select the final candidates for the Democratic and Republic parties. The party candidates are keen to win the party nomination of the respective party first to contest the presidency. The US electoral system is the least democratic and the most subject to manipulation of any major capitalist country purporting to be a democracy.
A country of 330 million people, and a political structure controlled by the top one-tenth of one percent, USA does not claim to be a welfare state to work for the common good for entire population.
American two-party system existing for more than 160 years, controlled by the corporatist elite, is now confronted with an unprecedented crisis of political legitimacy. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are losing their hold on a population that is deeply and profoundly alienated from the war mongering political establishment.
The official media are both oblivious to the reality of declining living standards in USA and deteriorating social conditions or are deliberately covering it up. America is the rising stock exchange and is increasing wealth of the super-rich and a privileged upper-middle-class layer.
The two party system has promoted an America as a deeply class-polarized society, with a vast and unbridgeable gulf between the wealthy and the rest of the population. It is this social reality that underlies the mounting crisis of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
US electorate feels it has been betrayed and bamboozled by the political system.
The Republican fanatic Donald Trump and the Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders have emerged somewhat popular alongside Mrs. Clinton. Contrary to all expectations, both Trump and Sanders have acquired mass support and emerged as the dominant figures in the primary process. The candidacy of Trump, the thuggish real-estate mogul and reality-television celebrity, was viewed as a entertaining sideshow that would soon lose its audience as gradually people would get fed up with religious fanaticism.
While the corporate-financial interests that control the Democratic Party still expect Clinton to win the nomination, the Sanders candidacy is seen as a harbinger of a continuing and uncontrollable left-wing political movement.
The massive economic collapse of 2008, on the very eve of the election of Barack Obama, marked a qualitative turning point in the crisis of American society. The unfolding crisis of the two-party system, like all significant political developments, has deep political and social roots. The protracted decline of US capitalism accumulating for decades has led to contradictions that are now blowing the two-party system apart. The disastrous impact of the economic crisis upon the lives of tens of millions of people is reflected in the growing rejection of two-party political system.
On the extreme right, barrage of insults against his Republican opponents and the media resonates with a section of the electorate that Moreover, Trump’s candidacy is the end-product of a degraded political environment that has relentlessly promoted and legitimized the sort of reactionary backwardness that Trump skillfully exploits.
The primary factor behind the crisis of the two-party system is the growth of political activism and anti-capitalist sentiment, expressed in strikes and contract rejections by autoworkers, steelworkers and teachers, as well as in opposition to police killings and outrage over lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, demonstrates that the ordinary people are waging an open struggle against corporate America.
Bernie Sanders, who is not a socialist but calls himself a “democratic socialist” and has placed economic inequality and Wall Street criminality at the center of his campaign, has moved into a virtual tie with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in pre-caucus polls.
