An impossible daydream?
April 23, 2016
Once, long ago in a land, far, far away I’d considered getting a doctorate in political science to study the damage the two-party system has done to American democracy.
I had this naïve hope that if I could just gain enough insight into the risks of our current political system, I would be able to change things.
Then I got pregnant, and the course of my life changed forever.
That is not to say that a mother can’t pursue academic research and higher learning. I have a friend who defended her dissertation while suffering labor pains.
(True story. She is a professor now, and is a wonderful mother to two lovely children.)
It just so happens that my life took a different direction, and I’m not at all sorry. Things turned out pretty cool for me, in a totally uncool, average person sort of way.
But I find myself wondering lately if perhaps my research might have predicted the circus that is the 2016 presidential election.
Of course, prediction is one thing, prevention entirely another. I’m certainly not the first person to be concerned with the two-party system.
It seems that despite all the warning signs, we have been on an unstoppable, out-of-control freight train towards this election for decades.
It is safe to say I am not a fan of partisan politics.
The two-party system gives the misguided and extremely dangerous impression that we have only two choices.
In reality, we have a myriad of choices. Democracy is supposed to bolster those choices, not stifle them.
Despite my forebodings, this election is still blowing my mind.
I know so many kind, intelligent, rational people. I’d hoped there were enough of us that it wouldn’t come to this.
And yet, here we are.
What we are experiencing now is the unfortunate confluence of advances in technology, ugly politics, and public indifference that have been building for several generations.
Unless a savior climbs out of the woodwork and takes this election by surprise at the eleventh hour, we are stuck with what we’ve got. And that is a crying shame.
Literally, tears have been shed.
So I decided to have a daydream, just to lighten my heart, if only for a few brief moments…
Imagine an election in which we didn’t have to pick between the lesser of two evils, in which we could stand at the polls pondering, not because we were trying to decide who is the least likely to completely destroy life as we know it, but because gosh darn it, all are such admirable people, and any would make a good president.
Imagine an election in which candidates debate the issues without calling names, without smirking smugly after delivering a good zinger that doesn’t really mean anything but will make a great soundbite on You Tube.
Imagine an election in which we have more than two choices, where we don’t have to pick between Far Extreme A and Far Extreme B.
Imagine an election, no… a nation!… where people understand the meaning of compromise, where people don’t equate a willingness to listen to the other side of the story with weakness.
Is this an impossible daydream? Is there a solution to this mess?
I don’t believe it would take a doctorate degree to resolve this.
Maybe, just maybe, if enough of us ask the right questions, if enough of us can imagine a better world, if enough of us are tired of living like this, maybe we can still fix it, together. I have to hope so. The alternative is unacceptable.
This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on April 23, 2016.
