PROGRESS: Hillary’s Nomination Could Be the End of the Two-Party Duopoly in America

According to the media, Hillary Rodham Clinton has become the first female nominee of a major political party in the running to be President of the United States. This is a historic first for our country. In the spirit of this progress, it should also be the end of the two-party duopoly established by a bunch of dead white men over a hundred years ago.

For over a century, political discourse in this country has been mostly limited to the fight between Democrats and Republicans, and it’s become especially entrenched in the past few decades with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle and the button-pushing rhetoric we’re bombarded with from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed. In the same way that “Kleenex” has become synonymous with facial tissue, the Democratic and Republican parties have gone overboard in tying their brands to everything that falls under the umbrellas of liberalism and conservatism.

Many of these hot-button issues are so intrinsic to people’s identities and daily lives it’s almost impossible not to take a side and pledge allegiance to one of the parties. Unfortunately for voters, these organizations have little to offer any more aside from a continuation of an elite corporate agenda that is not in the best interests of the American people. There’s many more examples than this: but notice how every single Republican voted for Obama’s TPP Fast-Track bill in spite of their longstanding history of opposing every word that comes out of his mouth. Notice how the warrantless NSA spying on American citizens started under Bush and actually became more unchecked under Obama. Notice the ever-increasing reach of the entire executive branch, regardless of which political ideology is allegedly sitting in the Oval Office. Publicly, Democrats and Republicans fight like cats and dogs, but there’s a number of major issues they completely align on (like the TPP), and those issues are mysteriously absent from the discourse of mainstream news.

The intensity (and level of distraction) of the culture war between liberalism and conservatism is at an all time high, while actual satisfaction with the Democrat and Republican parties is at an all time low.

It seems that while they’re busy fanning the flames of conflict between our citizens about how we’re supposed to live our lives and what the definition of “right” and “wrong” is, they’re actually doing very little to represent their constituents in the halls of our government. And everyone is noticing.

America is the largest democracy in the world, a melting pot literally defined by freedom, diversity and breadth of choice. Yet for the entire modern history of our nation, we have only been offered two real choices for President every four years. Especially in the last few decades, those offerings have become more and more divisive to our nation’s people. And for the record, we’re one of the few major democracies in the world to (dys)function like this.

Right now, the choice is allegedly between Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, two of the most hated Presidential candidates in history, and the sheer hopelessness of that dichotomy is making people crazy.

Scarcity has a horrifying effect on people, and part of what we’re witnessing with the increasingly extreme rhetoric of both sides of the culture war is the inevitable response to built up pressure with nowhere to go — a perfect reflection of the extreme confinement of choice forced upon our populace by habit, history and a corrupt political media. People are feeling hemmed in by the limited choices being forced upon them, and like passengers stuck on a sinking ship, understandably, our composure and class is falling on the wayside as we sink further and further below the water line.

However, unlike this sinking ship metaphor, the only thing creating this dichotomy between one or the other is the duopoly of the Democratic and Republican parties themselves, aided by the lazy, corrupt media that has absolutely no desire to legitimately inform viewers or help find solutions to our problems. The idea that we can only choose between a Democrat or Republican is an illusion propped up by money and history, and hypnotized into the public consciousness by the endless drone of media personalities overreacting to inevitable conflict. As the false dichotomy becomes more and more inescapable and suffocating, people are becoming more and more desperate.

And that includes Clinton and Trump themselves. Things have become so intense in our little “democratic” pressure cooker that the political landscape is currently undergoing a minor inversion. Conservative charlatan Trump is actively welcoming far-left Dems who are angered by the DNC’s treatment of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Hillary’s success now heavily depends on recruiting disaffected Republicans with focus-group tailored rhetoric for conservative deserters who hate that Trump is leading their party.

The reason people are so belligerent and angry about politics these days is because they’re “hangry” from a famine of real choice.

Americans have become so dissatisfied with the Democrat and Republican status-quo that registered independents now outnumber all of them. And between Hillary and Trump and masses of people on the red and blue teams who are fed up with the system, we might actually see all of this translate into a President who is neither Democrat or Republican come November.

It’s really simple: we need more than two parties. And there are plenty of options to choose from out there.

They just need to be taken seriously. Jill Stein of the Green Party is actively courting Bernie Sanders to join their ranks. There’s the Libertarian Party. There’s an Independent Party. There’s also people who are more literally independent and not actually part of a party.

To the jaded Democrat readers afraid of another Ralph Nader, let me pre-emptively shut you down with this article.

The political duopoly doesn’t just present of problem of choice. It’s a considerable security issue as well. When power is as consolidated as it is between Democrats and Republicans, it would be very easy to corrupt with bribery. And that’s exactly what’s happening, according to Represent.Us, an organization devoted to campaign finance reform. In their most-viewed video, they explain the process by which monied interests “lobby” individual politicians for favorable legislation. What they don’t mention is that multi-national corporations do the same thing with entire political parties. Actually, both political parties, at the same time.

Notice that while we celebrate victories and lick the wounds of defeat on hot-button social issues like equality and gun-control, the largest multi-national corporations in the world are always doing better and better, regardless of whose in the White House.

Congratulations America, you have proven that we have moved enough out of the dark ages of racism and sexism to be lead by an African American man for eight years, and that you’re considering a woman to be his successor. But don’t stop there. We need even MORE DIVERSITY and MORE PROGRESS. We have to transcend this two-party duopoly and actually have a real democracy instead of this Game of Thrones bullshit fed to us by the same media conglomerates whose shareholders own most of Washington.