> I am independent and not a Democrat or a Republican because they are two sides of the same coin.
The only sense in which this is true: the GOP are fascist, racist authoritarians who have waged a decades-long war on the middle and lower class; the Democrats aren't.
If you think the Democrats and GOP are equally bad, you're out of your mind.
systemic problems require systemic solutions, currently the systemic incentives are for single-party. If you want multiparty you're going to have to want a good deal of constitutional changes or internal party structure changes (although we already have a good amount of that in the form of house caucuses).
Maybe they do though the most powerful movements are grassroots. If it can get enough momentum to outpace the demonization that surely follows growth.
For example, who wouldn't support anti-fascism? That morphed into "antifa" which became the source of all the worlds ills according to the orange goblin. Yet only a fascist could be afraid of anti-fascism.
We "just" need all states to agree, simultaneously, that first-past-the-post elections are dumb, and implement something else (ranked choice, approval, whatever). That would allow other political parties to form and start gaining seats everywhere from local offices up to Congress.
Eliminating the electoral college would of course require amending the constitution, and of course GOP-led states will never be in favor of that, since they benefit from it, and most of the time have not / will not win the popular vote.
> I don't understand why a new party has not formed to leave the batshit crazies behind.
Because when hyperspaces of political positions are projected onto a one dimensional binary, to choose to form a new party guarantees that one half of the hyperspace loses for a generation until there is a full party realignment. It is game theoretically sub-optimal in the short and medium terms, and depending on the effectiveness of your opponents, the long term as well.
Politics is attractive to people with psychopathy. I'm not gonna say they're all that way, but a significant enough chunk of any political apparatus in the US is. If you want to have any chance of getting elected - much less having a real career - you have to play by the rules of those who see humans as means to ends and gamble that their opponents won't go as low to stop them.
Game theory. It askss a fundamental choice on if you'd rather lose to democrats for the next decade miniumum while you split or ride out the Trump wave.
But in the same regards, Democrats have a similar struggle. It's clear trust is also very low right now within the party and that some people would rather have a party more focused on socialists causes a la Bernie. But is that worth risking a blue wave through the 20's and part of the 30's ?
I see. They're two sides of the same coin in the sense that they're both part of the two party system. My original comment is overstatement and maybe melodramatic. Sorry for that, and for the accusation, and thanks for the civil, thoughtful response.
The other comments do a good job of explaining why an alternative party hasn't emerged, better than I probably can, so I'll skip that part. To some extent I do wish (and I gather you share the wish) that the US political system worked more like Europe's multi-party parliamentary democracies, relying on shifting, unstable coalitions rather than monolithic, monopolistic party machinery. On the other hand, I think it was Europe's parliamentary system that preceded, and produced, the Third Reich and other fascist regimes in the early 20th century.
In fact, I wonder whether two-party systems, like the US, on average produce worse outcomes than multi-party parliamentary systems. I'm not sure they do. But I also don't know enough about politics, political theory, or modern history to answer the question myself. I'm not even sure which other political systems are, or were, two party.
Edit:
On second thought, I'm not sure I agree at all with the other comments that explain why alternative parties haven't emerged. The comments all take for granted that there's a desire for an alternative but also that the alternative wouldn't be viable. I'm not sure there is such a desire. Most polls show that GOP voters approve of the party, if I'm not mistaken. So the answer to your question may be a lot grimmer than the one already offered here: there's no third party, very simply, because the overwhelming majority of GOP voters really do want a fascist regime.
On that note, this article is worth reading: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism . It makes a great case against the materialist explanation of authoritarianism's rise in the US (i.e. the claim that Trump voters are angry about their worsening prospects, declining fortunes, and deteriorating communities, often related to the opioid epidemic). Instead, it explains support for authoritarianism as a result of disposition and psychology. That rings true to me. American authoritarians really do care about the things they say they care about -- above all, "woke" politics, transgender people in bathrooms, immigrants, Muslims, people of color receiving preferential (i.e. fair) treatment. They really are fighting a cultural and religious war, not struggling against unfair, challenging economic conditions. They really are just hateful.
They hate secular progressives and want to shut them out of the political process -- and want to brainwash their children.
They hate LGBTQ people and really do want to push them back into the closet -- and ideally wipe them out.
They hate people of color, or those who seek equality, and see nothing wrong with the disadvantages people of color face. Out of one corner of their mouths they'll scream about tradition, their pride in "their" country, and how hard their parents and their parents' parents worked -- and then out of the other corner of their mouths they'll reject that America's history of slavery, Jim Crow, racism, and the like have any continuing relevance or consequences for people of color.
They hate immigrants (or rather brown immigrants) and really do want to close the borders.
They're driven, in short, by a primitive xenophobia triggered by anything different from themselves -- which is why Fake Tan President is their God emperor. He's one of them.
> They're two sides of the same coin in the sense that they're both part of the two party system. My original comment is overstatement and maybe melodramatic.
I wouldn't apologize for this; GP was using "two sides of the same coin" in a way that is not mainstream. That phrase is usually used to say "even though these two things seem different, they're really the same thing".
(I like GP's use of that phrase better, to be honest, but that's not what it means.)
I agree that they are not equally bad, and-
Democrats since Carter have bowed to influence from neoliberal capitalists, and capitalism is is a "boom-bust-quit" cycle, which I see as narrow-minded and selfish. Clinton got away with undoing the 1933 Glass-Stiegel Act (separating stock market and banking? financial regulation to reduce boom-bust amplitude, anyway) in 1999 by selling a "third way" that was really just watered-down Reaganomics (neoliberal capitalism, following the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership). Neither Obama nor Biden did enough to prevent oligrarchy, eithe, though under Biden the value of future lives was increased a bit. All the Republican presidents have done more harm, though.
I'm really disheartened by this trend, and one little upside is that I'm bonding & bridging with local people, because it gives me a sense of meaning and efficacy. HN is my only social media outlet, and I only dip my toes in now and then.
Yup, this is fair. But I'd also guess that deregulation of news media in the 80s(?), turning it into entertainment, tipped the scales in favor of news media that promoted fear/disgust, which, in turn, gave the GOP a massive advantage. The GOP progressively cornered the market on paranoiac lunacy probably after the Civil Rights act, Goldwater's defeat, and Vietnam. A boring journalistic environment, with legally enforceable objectivity, would have been good for the left. What we had instead -- an environment that rewards sensationalism and outrage, appealing to the amygdala -- was good for the right.
> under Biden the value of future lives was increased a bit
One of those sides is milquetoast and piecemeal kowtows to corporate interests, but still generally belives in the rule of law. The other side has been busy making Nazi salutes and illegally giving complete read-write access to the entire government's payroll to random twentysomethings who work for a South African billionare.
>> That an aggressor nation can walk into another country's sovereign territory and annex it with the blessing of a sitting US president is a disgrace.
They did that first in 2014 under Obama, and again under Biden. The current situation has no criteria for an end - it's an endless conflict. Trump is going to move towards resolution of that and the fighting.
There's still quite a bit of Europe that Russia wants to plunder for resour... I mean... influence. All of Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, the Balkans - anywhere that used to be a part of the Warsaw Pact - is a target.
Appeasing Putin now will likely see another military action in the next decade, especially if the US significantly reduces or totally ends its commitment to NATO.
To be fair, the US has done nothing but harp on its allies in the organization to increase their g_ddamn defense spending for the better part of three decades now, and only some of them have truly taken it seriously since 2022. Even if spending levels are increased now, it won't have enough of an effect to see battlefield dividends for several years, if not at least a decade. The end result is that the US will be the security backstop for a Europe that has taken American willingness to get into a possible thermonuclear war for granted, in the face of more Russian incursion, no matter how poorly handled that incursion might be.
The UK and France also have nukes. I'm not sure about the UK, but France at least would shield NATO and EU with the nuclear umbrella even if the US leaves NATO. Finland, Romania and Poland might want to ask France if it minds sharing.. ideally before the alliance gets so weak that Putin decides to test our resolve.
> France at least would shield NATO and EU with the nuclear umbrella even if the US leaves NATO
This is absolutely not the case. The French nuclear arsenal is controlled separately to the joint NATO command and the French have traditionally made it very clear it is for the protection of France, not NATO. Indeed France left NATO for years partly over this and only rejoined in 2009.
Macron has opened discussions about a "pan-Europe" nuclear shield, but be very clear: if Russia was to use battlefield nuclear weapons in say Poland, there is no expectation that France would respond. There is an expectation that NATO would respond (or there was last year.. who knows if NATO is reliable now?)
sucks to be Poland or Finland then, I guess. some tactical nukes ought to soften up whatever conventional forces are defending Warsaw and Helsinki. maybe Trump can meet with Putin in Saudi Arabia again to broker some peace accords.
...seriously, if I were Finland I'd be looking at starting a sovereign weapons program.
IIRC the UK and France have enough nuclear weapons to decimate an industrialized economy. The UK also shares some of its nuclear weapons program with the United States through the servicing of its Vanguard class submarines at King's Bay, GA.
They do not have enough to create an exchange that could wipe out human society, which is the deterrent that the US brought to bear.
If you are Vladimir Putin, with enough infrastructure to possibly protect yourself and your ruling class from an attack of 120 warheads, but not 1700, your calculus for the use of nuclear weapons - particularly the tactical type, of which Russia has many - changes considerably if the people with 1700 warheads are no longer going to use them against you.
I think that's an overoptimistic judgement of the fate of Ukrainians left stuck under Russian control. Russia doesn't even care about its own people dying.
This is not unlike saying that rape ceases to be rape when the victim stops resisting.
We have every reason to think that "ending the war" under Chief Cheeto will mean "capitulate to the aggressor," and Russia has already shown its eagerness to commit genocide against Ukraine and eradicate it culturally.
So he is indeed complicit. The unacceptable terms he wants or likely will suggest (and the unacceptable manner in which he pursues those terms, by negotiating without Ukraine's involvement) -- essentially Ukraine's surrender -- amount, by corollary, to a justification of further Russian aggression when Ukraine rejects them.
> Utter nonsense. He's trying to end the war. That may not happen on terms that make you happy, but people will stop dying which is quite the opposite of what you said
I was going to say just like Neville Chamberlain did with Hitler - but realised that would be grossly unfair on Chamberlain as he never tried to exploit Czechoslovakia for half of its mineral resources.
He is trying to "end the war" on terms that enrich himself, in vainglorious pursuit of a Nobel peace prize, and in a way that will almost inevitably result in a wider conflict very soon. Please don't pretend this is about "people will stop dying". That is utter nonsense.
Putting aside every instinct I have to join the choir voicing every issue I have with blaming the victim and cozying up to the agitator, or to challenge your charitable view of Trump's motivations...
I'm genuinely interested to hear your take on the likely and potential repercussions of rewarding Russia/Putin for their aggression. What makes you confident that they won't reasonably perceive this outcome as tacit permission to start coming for other territory?
Putin loves working off maps from the 1800s. Finland, for example, is a likely future target.
Not to be hyperbolic, but there's a good reason you aren't supposed to negotiate with terrorists.
I have no confidence at all. In fact, preventing further Russian aggression might not be Trump's goal to begin with. After all, Trump did say he would encourage Russia to invade a country that didn't pay its due.
>What makes you confident that they won't reasonably perceive this outcome as tacit permission to start coming for other territory?
Putin has approximately zero interest in territories and annexations. The entire war with Ukraine is exclusively a reaction to the Maidan in 2014, an attempt to prevent something similar in Russia.
Talks about "rewarding Russia" - is literally Putin's propaganda to hide his complete failure. There is no reward, the whole current situation in which Putin put himself, when his authority and influence is lower then ever - was planned as a short two week campaign with no downsides.
> Putin has approximately zero interest in territories and annexations.
Frankly, that's just horseshit.
He annexed Ukraine. He's taken territory in South Ossetia. His actions in Ukraine are a response to the lack of international community stopping him in his prior expansionist plays, and he will continue to push the boundary until he is stopped. Accepting Putin's claims about his motivations at face value is the height of naivety.
> He is making himself complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Ukraine
There's no need for hyperbole. Trump is bad but there's been less than 100,000 Ukrainian deaths (troops and civilians combined) since the beginning of the war in 2022, let alone under his reign.
It might be 100,000 by now: “A confidential Ukrainian estimate from earlier this year [2024] put the number of dead Ukrainian troops at 80,000 and the wounded at 400,000, according to people familiar with the matter.”
[https://archive.ph/5wRcT]
And today Trump blamed the Ukrainians for the war going on for that long, saying they could have stopped it three years ago.
While that might be true (there's a whole ball of wax about whether or not that's true), it's probably not true for combined deaths. No doubt well more than hundred thousand, and I wouldn't be surprised if more than two hundred thousand.
The deaths are tragic. And no matter how many there are, Trump's actions will certainly make the number go up before it stops.
