Another one from Overcoming Bias, which I think I will have to add to the RSS feed:
“The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford, “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
Read the whole thing. If you’r a third party voter, it’s a great defense of voting third party. I think the two party dichotomy is entirely to ingrained in our system to go away any time soon. The time to vote your conscious is the primary, and in local elections, where you can help bring political talent into the public arena. I mean really help. One person can make a difference in local races. Of course, I also think political participation is about a lot more than voting.
I’m a sucker for anything that quotes from the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” books. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read those.
We’re never going to have a viable 3rd party with the structure of our constitution. A contender will rise up, and either supplant and existing party or go away.
Additionally, ballot access at the state level is rigged to favor the established factions. It’s why Nader gets retreaded election after election, and why the LP nominated Bob Barr with a straight face. The name recognition helps overcome the barriers to ballot access.
Heh.
As a longtime backer of the Libertarian candidate, I told a friend this year that my stance right before the election was composed of two things:
1) Palin.
2) The Democrats finally managed to actually run the Wrong Lizard.
I pretty much agree. I still can’t honestly believe I actually campaigned for John McCain. I put a Sportsmen for McCain sticker on my car. I even have the hat. And in the primary I had to admit I ranked McCain ahead of Romney and Giuliani. A year prior to that I swore I would never even vote for the guy.
That was until the Democrats did indeed nominate the wrong lizard. God help us.
I’m still bitter that Fred Thompson, who I donated money to, was down and out by the time the Pennsylvania primary rolled around.
But I will still say he ran a bad campaign.
In retrospect, I believe that Fred was probably grudgingly persuaded to run by friends, and set some internal benchmark like “If X happens by Y date, I will know that this is meant to happen, but otherwise, I’m going home.“