Innovating Beyond the Uni-party System
A Common Sense Approach
A recent article by Joe Cook from Common Sense 250 titled Innovating Beyond the Two-party System caught my eye. I think this is critical for establishing any democracy. Common Sense 250 is trying to build the much-needed movement, focused not on left/right squabbles but focused on the real injustice of top/bottom, the few vs the many. And of course, the problems we all have with the two-party system is all in place by design. It is no accident; it is the choice made by the power elite who control the money. Our binary political system, giving the people a choice, is easier to control than one more diverse. The winner-take-all electoral system helps maintain polarization even if it is a fraud.
We know the problem; it is a global monetary system that concentrates wealth and power to the wealthiest few who then use that power to influence public policy for maximizing their own profits. They are not interested in fixing things; they see those problems as opportunities. Their only interest is in maximizing profits and control. The two parties serve the same masters with different PR strategies to maintain the theater that they are representing their bases. However, it is a fraud, we are ruled by an unelected government that controls all the agencies and owns our national sovereignty. We need to elect a new government that will take our national sovereignty back.
Fadhel Kaboub along with Joe Firestone were enlisted in 2018 to defend the MMT proposals to change the Green Party’s Platform regarding money and banking but Fadhel never showed. Perhaps he didn’t want to defend MMT, I don’t blame him. Anyway, since we hadn’t heard from him, I thought I would listen to this talk of his I came across on YouTube and found it very good. Still, as with all academics like Christine Desan, Saule Omarova, etc. they must be careful what they say to maintain their positions but clearly these people know what needs to be done. Here Fadhel Kaboub lays out very well how the extreme economic injustice by design works in Africa.
Restructuring the Global Economic architecture will require a just monetary transition to monetary sovereignty for all nations. Without that I think the vitally important food and energy sovereignty cannot be achieved.
Joe mentions the work presented by two political scientists, Suzanne Mettler (Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University) and Robert C. Lieberman (Political Science Professor at Johns Hopkins University), saying,
“These authors find that a crisis of democracy typically occurs in one of four settings: 1) political polarization, 2) racism and nativism, 3) economic inequality, and 4) excessive executive power.1 The unique challenge of our times is the simultaneous burden of all four factors impacting American political life.”
I think all four factors are driven by the system that creates and allocates the money based on the choices of those who control it.
How many people know that the industrial bankers began influencing universities in the late 19th century to gain academic support for their central bank proposal, meaning central control of money creation by the biggest banks? They funded the creation of Economics departments and Political Science departments again by design to suppress the study of Political Economy. You see, they made Economics be the study of wealth while ignoring power (money) and Political Science the study of power while ignoring wealth (money). Political Economy is the study of the relationship between power and wealth. The political, environmental, and social mess we are in is all by design. A structurally flawed design that has been concentrating wealth to the top of over 400 years. And because all the money is created as interest-bearing debt the problems will continue to get worse and worse until we change the system.
Political polarization
I think our society over time has been taught and encouraged that political discrimination is fair game for civil society. We should listen to what George Lakey says about polarization. “Political scientists have discovered that economic inequality drives political polarization. The economic driver of inequality is far more powerful than civil discourse can manage.”
Joe mentions choice and reflection, I think it is very good to reflect on our choices. Lakey points out that “the polarization in Germany and Italy in the 1920s and ’30s did not facilitate progress; the outcomes were totalitarian regimes.” Indeed, the left and right had street brawls in Germany and Italy while in the Nordic countries the left and right united to challenge the power elite, those at the top of the economic ladder able to influence public policy. It was a choice based on reflection. We need to get people to see left/right as a construct to keep us fighting one another so we won’t challenge those at the top. The problem is not left/right, it is top/bottom.
Yes, “Our inability to break the power struggle in the two-party system at the national level is crushing our ability to govern with reflection and choice.” This is because their money donors are making the public policy, it is their choice not ours. We need a government that has the sovereign power to serve us instead. To change the system will require legislation and the legislation is already written that would return the money creation power to the elected government.
As a Green I have often pointed out that when two parties are at each other’s throat they are dysfunctional and require a third party to help them resolve their differences. 😊