a Norwegian gentleman said to me today
"America is full of choice, but it's irrelevant choice. You have fifty kinds of cereal! An entire aisle of cereal. But when you go to vote, there are only two parties, and they're basically the same."
posted by JenIsFamous at 12/18/2005 10:59:00 PM
6 Comments:
He is, of course, wrong. Our two major political parties are about as similar as cereal and gasoline.
Gentle Norwegian here...
Both parties are basically right-wing. They're both into invading random countries. They're both mostly represented by old white rich men. They're both for the death penalty. They're both corrupt and controlled by big business interests. They both support systems that lead to an incredibly uneven distribution of wealth. And on and on and on.
I know which party I would choose, because yes, there are some vital differences, but don't fool yourself. They're much more alike than they are different.
And even if they were really dissimilar, that's still just two choices...
Hi. Not random countries-- carefully chosen ones (though you obviously disagree with their reasons, as do I).
The age, race and gender of the representatives are less relevant than their stances on issues-- and anyway of my four federal representatives, two are women, two are Jewish, and one is neither (there's some overlap).
One party is less for supporting the continued uneven distribution of wealth than the other... but has done a horrible job marketing their ideas. We're a country of people who think that if you cut taxes, money will fall from the sky rather than the actual effect of deficits. And perhaps that's the fault of the educational system-- but then again one party wants to allocate more money for science and math education and the other party would rather spend billions of dollars on standardized tests and doesn't believe in evolution.
You want some more differences? One party is pro-choice, pro gay rights, for maintaining the separation of church and state...
And anyway, mathematically if you have more than two parties you actually create a more difficult environment for voters (search for Arrow's Impossibility Theorem if you want the math behind this).
I hope Jen doesn't mind a political debate on her forum.
I certainly don't mind you debating in my comments, but I don't even think there's that much disagreement happening here.
Certainly I have a strong preference between the two parties in America, but I can also agree that, compared to nations that have viable (as in, taking enough parliamentary seats to sway an election and affect parliament) communist parties or far-right wacko parties, our parties are much more similar to one another.
They try to be similar when they can, so that they capture more of the voters whose opinions fall in between the two parties. But in some ways that works better than the system in parliamentary countries, where a small one-issue party can hold everything up and side with whichever party gives it the best deal.
And then to make matters worse, the same country who have 50 different types of cereal, voted the same a**hole into office ... twice!
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