What Then Must Be Done?

The political system of the United States is a house of cards, built by the Republicrat-Democan duopoly and stacked in its favor (and that of its underwriters, the militarized corporatocracy) against the best interests of the American people. It is the belief of this writer, however, that the American people retain at least one card that, if placed upon the "house," has the potential of dismantling it to the point where the people themselves may actually effect a non-violent revolution, take control of their government and, for perhaps the first time in their history, make it their own.

The following article contains my arguments and recommendations for what must be done.

No longer riding on the merry-go-round/I just had to let it go—John Lennon, “Watching the Wheels” (1980)

In 2012, defining insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” has become proverbial. It was already proverbial in 2008, but that didn’t stop the American electorate from demonstrating the proverb’s clear applicability to American politics. True, in 2008, many Americans went to the polls thinking that they were bringing about authentic change by voting for Barack Obama: and, in a sense, by electing an African American President, they did usher in a new era. Obama is the Jackie Robinson of American Presidential politics. From a politically progressive standpoint, however, this comparison is only too accurate. Jackie Robinson was, as is well known, politically conservative. Without denying Robinson’s clear gifts as an athlete, one may legitimately question whether a ball-player who was not only black and athletically gifted but also politically leftist would have been permitted to cross major league baseball’s infamous “color line.” Likewise, without denying Obama’s clear gifts as a politician, one may legitimately question whether a black candidate who was genuinely progressive would be permitted to take up residence in the unfortunately (but accurately) nicknamed “White House.”

In any case, what the American body politic needed in 2008 is needed no less in 2012: structural political change. In 2008, Obama appeared to promise that kind of change—what with his appeal to grassroots organizations like MoveOn.org. Four years later, however, it is clear that the President is not only incapable of delivering structural political change, such change is not even part of his vision. Indeed, one wonders if he even has a vision—other than re-election. And, for their part, most people in the United States who identify themselves as “politically progressive” are in much the same position as the President: their “vision” does not appear to extend much beyond re-electing Obama. As far as the proverb goes, American Progressives fit the definition of insanity to a T.

What then must be done? To begin, we must finally acknowledge to ourselves the absolute futility of electoral politics under the current system. The plebiscite is a placebo. It is a reassuring (and yet perennially disappointing) distraction. It funnels creative political energy away from effective action and re-directs it to a government-sponsored (but not Constitutionally prescribed) ritual: one in which our votes merely ratify the choices made for the electorate by the two dominant political parties.

Wait a minute: Is it true that this process is not Constitutionally prescribed? In fact, it is not. Provision is made in the U.S. Constitution for the election of the President and members of Congress, but there is no provision made for the current “two-party” system. Space does not permit the rehearsal of how the current system evolved, but, for present purposes, all that is necessary to keep in mind is that the two-party system is not Constitutionally authorized and, therefore, the American people are under no legal obligation to retain it. Even if it were Constitutionally authorized, the American people would still be under no legal obligation to retain the current system—however, under those circumstances, systemic change would require a Constitutional amendment—an onerous process by any measure. The time has come to break the two-party stranglehold on the democratic aspirations of all Americans. That means that it is time to demand fundamental change of the American electoral system.

But wait again: What is wrong with having a two-party political system? In theory: nothing. In theory, the two parties that currently share real power in the United States are broadly enough constituted that they can plausibly represent a wide spectrum of American political opinion. The problem is that the two parties do not, in fact, represent a wide spectrum of American political opinion—at least when it comes to crafting and implementing policies that might reflect that spectrum. Indeed, I used the metaphor of a funnel when describing the effect of the electoral process upon creative political energy—in the sense of “funneling” that energy away from channels in which it might threaten the present political status quo. This metaphor is equally apt for describing the effect of the two-party system upon the process by which the spectrum of American political opinion finds enactment into law and government policy. A wide range of ideas and opinions are poured into the top of the two-party funnel but, by the time they reach the spout of effective enactment, they are narrowly “expressed” and, in fact, represent only a very thin band of political interests. Whose interests do they represent? Since at least the end of World War Two, they represent the interests of the military and the business class.

This is not news to anyone—or ought not to be. The sociologist C. Wright Mills described the present configuration of American politics quite accurately almost six decades ago in his book, The Power Elite. By the time that Mills published his book in 1956, the mutual investments and interdependence of the military, the civilian government, and big business were already established and entrenched. The passage of time has only made those ties ever deeper and more Byzantine. The Republican and Democratic parties do not represent the broad spectrum of political opinion in the United States: they represent the very narrow interests of the power elite. One might even describe the two parties as “wholly owned subsidiaries” of that elite insofar as all of their activities are financed by a relatively small (and extremely wealthy) proportion of the American electorate. So long as the electorate continues to cooperate with the two-party system as it exists in 2012—and as it has existed since at least the Second World War—it will continue to exemplify by word and deed the proverbial definition of insanity.

But what choice do we have? Despite the self-congratulatory story that we love to tell ourselves about the American political system, about our government “of, by, and for” the people, the truth is far less attractive. The simple fact of the matter is that we have very little choice at all. And the one option that most (if not all) of the readers of this article are expecting me to advocate—voting for a third party candidate—is a proven loser. That option has been tried repeatedly and has changed nothing. The reason it has changed nothing is that, by definition, a third party can have no genuine purchase upon a two-party political system. Voting for a third party candidate in a two-party system is like arriving at a gunfight armed with a knife. A vote for a third party candidate in a major American election is, at best, a weak gesture of protest. Of course, one can always pretend to have a multi-party political system in the United States, but to do so would be to live in a fantasy world. Just as I am not advocating the repetitive behavior that proverbially defines insanity, I am not advocating electoral self-delusion. I am writing to counsel the abandonment of those kinds of behaviors—if possible, once and for all. I am counseling sanity.

Sanity resides in the dismantling of the two-party political system. The difficulty that the American people face with regard to this challenge—besides the obvious difficulty of out-maneuvering the lawyers, guns, and money of the power elite—is that, since this system evolved in the relative silence of the Constitution upon the conduct of electoral politics in the United States, there is no Constitutional mechanism in place to end what Howard Zinn rightly termed the “duopoly.” The American electorate cannot go to the polls in November and “vote out” the two-party political system for the simple reason that electoral politics in the United States presumes that very system. Nor can the electorate effectively prevail upon Republicans and Democrats to dismantle the system themselves: to do so would be to ask them to commit political and professional suicide and is not, therefore, a serious option. It is interesting to note, however, that when the elected representatives of those two parties—I do not say the elected representatives of the people, but of those parties—feel the “heat” of the public’s dissatisfaction with the system, they inevitably feign frustration with “partisan politics” and give lip-service to the need for “greater bi-partisanship.” The irony of this rhetoric is that there is far too much “bi-partisanship” in American politics today. What we need is a new political pluralism that will fairly represent (and thereby enfranchise) the increasingly diverse interests of the American people.

We are stuck then. Trapped. We have created a Leviathan in the two-party system and are now completely in its thrall. I would like to suggest otherwise but I believe that, to do so, would be dishonest. Our options are really quite limited. Now, it is true that, by virtue of a twisted and de-historicized reading of the Second Amendment of the Constitution, the people of this country do have the option of arming themselves and marching on Washington. That would result, however, in a blood bath and no change. Despite the assertions of right wing gun enthusiasts, no amount of firepower in the hands of U.S. citizens could match the U.S. military’s ability to quell any armed rebellion in this country. Remember: I am counseling sanity. The lunatic fantasies of the militia movement (or, to shift to the “progressive” side of the political spectrum, the now-defunct Weather Underground) will get us nowhere.

Our only genuine options are what I would call “metapolitical.” They are both moral and non-violent. And they center on the one instrument that has proved effective, historically, in the hands of any people with democratic aspirations who face a powerful, entrenched, and violent minority: the general strike.

I recognize that this was the preferred tactic of the Occupy Movement. I also recognize that the Occupy Movement’s employment of this tactic has, thus far, failed. Sorry: it needs to be said. But the general strike—if not the Occupy Movement itself—has history on its side. What it needs is to be directed to the heart of the problem: the Leviathan itself—the elite authorized and financed Democan-Republicrat duopoly. The question that Progressives face in 2012 is how to apply the technique of the general strike to the political system itself.

Here is my proposal: a national movement to generate a “Vote of No Confidence” in the political system as presently arranged. This November, instead of going to the polls to ratify the two-party system’s continued stranglehold upon American democratic aspirations, the American people should go on strike. Not from their jobs or their classrooms, necessarily—although that, too, would send a message. No, what I have in mind is something different: we should go on strike from voting. Speaking personally, I have voted in every Presidential election since I first became eligible to do so in 1980. But, in 2012—nine Presidential election cycles later—I have finally decided to take the cure: I wish to be delivered from my own proverbial insanity. I argue, therefore, that we should begin now to organize “non-voter drives”—knocking on our neighbor’s doors and urging them to stay at home on Election Day as a form of popular revolt against the political system as it stands. Politics as usual must come to a halt. In accordance with the 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—the Amendment which assures us that the explicit language of that document does not exhaust the fund of rights inherent in the American people themselves—we have it within our power to refuse to participate in a system that no longer belongs to the vast majority of us: a system which belongs, instead, to the very wealthy and politically connected. In my view, 9th Amendment power is, really, the only potentially effective power that the vast majority retains. If the people desire systemic change, they must exercise what effective power they have—and they should do so consciously, according to principle, vocally, and en masse.

Now, this should not be too difficult. After all, the number of Americans who actually go to the polls in any given election, compared to the numbers who are eligible to vote, is not impressive. Over the past half century, doing the math yields a statistic that has hovered in the range of 50-55 percent. Not surprisingly, it is the duopoly that strenuously encourages and facilitates voter turnout. The reason that it does so (as with everything else it does) is self-serving: on the day after the election, the two parties want their victorious members to be able to claim the popular legitimacy necessary to govern in a democracy.

I say: the time has come to refuse them that legitimacy and to provoke an electoral crisis that would bring into bold relief the Constitutional crisis under which our system has labored, without acknowledgment, for the past two centuries. All patriotic fantasies about the godlike foresight of the Founding Fathers aside, the U.S. Constitution is a human, all-too-human, document in need of repair. The primary obligation of Progressives in 2012 is to provoke a national conversation about (1) the evolution of our political system in the absence of clear Constitutional directives, (2) how that system obstructs and enervates American democracy, and (3) where to go from here. The way to do that, in my view, is to reduce voter turnout in November to well below 50% of registered voters. I would like to see voter turnout as low as it can possibly go—which I imagine to be in the teens.

Think about it: a government elected by, say, 12% of registered voters—that would represent an even lower percentage of the actual number of Americans of voting age. Those elected would have the legal right to govern, but they would lack all political and moral legitimacy. The system itself would be rebuked. A cloud hanging over the government, a crisis of legitimacy would ensue. A general voter’s strike would finally give the American people some leverage over Leviathan.

If such a crisis could be provoked, then it is my hope that, in its wake, my fellow Americans might begin to dream again about what a functioning democracy actually looks like. In the process, I would also hope that they might embrace the notion of a vigorous, Constitutionally authorized, multi-party democracy like those enjoyed by the citizens of democratic polities throughout the world.

Of course, I am not so naïve as to think that the mere multiplication of political parties will achieve the objective of placing power in the hands of the American people; for so long as the political system itself is financially underwritten by the power elite, two parties or two dozen parties will not provide the genuine change that is needed. Consequently, the Constitution must also be amended in such a way as to finally strip our politics of “hard” money and “soft” favors. Naturally, the Constitutional abrogation of the anti-democratic Citizens United decision of 2010 is only part of the process I am contemplating. The financing of the American political system requires not reform but a complete, top-to-bottom overhaul. Those who enter “public service” in order to create or augment a personal fortune ought not only to be disappointed: they should be considered enemies of the people and treated accordingly under federal criminal law.

Politics as usual will not produce the radical overhaul necessary to wrest the American electoral process from the hands of the power elite. There can be no compromise with the two-party system: it must be dismantled completely and with prejudice. The place to begin this demolition project is the popular de-legitimation of the existing, anti-democratic power structure. Under the 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the legitimacy of any power structure in the United States not specifically defined in, or provided for, by the Constitution, reposes in the people. If we, the people, choose not to use our right to confer or withhold legitimacy on any given, extra-Constitutional power structure (such as the two-party system), we have no one to blame for the sorry state of our nation and our politics but ourselves.

If self-identifying political Progressives lack the stomach for this kind of non-violent, counter-intuitive, guerrilla action against the system that perennially stifles their most noble dreams and aspirations, then the proverbial definition of insanity will remain their lot. Deny it, as they will, all their remonstrations to the contrary will be, to this writer’s ears at least, little more than the ravings of the mad.

Remember the sage observation of Emma Goldman: