The Decline, and Hopefully Fall, of the Two Party System

By and large within the United States politics has adhered to a two party system. We warp a mutating and diverse matrix of issues and goals into two camps over and over again through the years. This was more successful when the country was smaller - lesser population, less diversity, fewer issues, less complex economy, etc., etc. In today's web of issues, the two party system seems to be getting weighted down and frozen as it tries to keep to the staid behavior of the past. But habit and tradition cannot free us from the expectation of two meaningful parties and a bunch of fringe humor candidates.

Look at the current drama of the government 'shutdown'. The Republican Party is being held politically captive by a faction which is essentially a third party within it, 'The Tea Party'. We even call it a party, but keep it lumped within the accepted grouping because we cannot allow them to stand on their own.

There is a lot of dialogue and 'podium thumping' at home and on the internet about 'failures of leadership' and other fun terms. I think those are inaccurate to large extent. The failure is in the structure of the two party system in the United States. Why is the Tea Party mucking up the core Republican Party public image and platform, why can't the Tea Party survive by itself on merits all its own?

For that matter, if climate/environment are worthy focus issues of their own with a lot of support, why doesn't the Green Party get more national weight than in 2-3 states as a local phenomenon? Can we let actual socialists be a Socialist party, away from the Democrats (which really are not the same thing no matter what conservative talking heads want us to believe)?

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It is time, probably past time, for the political establishment to embrace the diversity of our nation within the core structure of the 'process' and stop forcing political dialogue to gravity to two poles. I do not see real compromise, cooperation, and progress coming until the individual voices get broken from the Ying-Yang dichotomy within which we are trapped.