It’s the system, man!

I was looking at the election returns for New York State this evening, and the thing that really struck me was that in all of the congressional races in New York, and there are many, not a single incumbent lost. That goes for Republicans and Democrats.

That’s an absurd result because, as a whole, the people of New York State are very unhappy with the direction that the Republican Party is taking America. Unfortunately, New York State is gerrymandered to the max, with districts that preserve a power status quo that is so stable that it’s covered in cobwebs an inch thick.

There is no real choice for us when each district is carefully designed to provide solid majorities for one party or the other. Yet, the system isn’t about to change because it suits the elite members of both parties to hold onto the power they’ve got.

I’m saying this as a member of the New York State Democratic Committee, albeit a minor and relatively powerless one. The system stinks.

From what I can see of the results of this year’s elections, the story is the same in most other places in the United States. The thing is that this is a natural result of democracy, which is a form of government in which powerful people rule by convincing the populace to support them. Of all the forms of government, this one works the best.

But, it still stinks.

As I watch the leaders of the Democratic Party follow the Republicans in their swerve to the far right side of American politics, like eager puppies hoping for a few table scraps, I wonder what the alternative to following the Democrats is. After all, I cannot bring myself to follow the Democratic leadership in their sprint into the Republican territory of unrestrained nationalism.

The Green Party, while nice in theory, is in truth heavily infiltrated by Republican Party operatives who take delight in pumping the party full of just enough money to make a little splash at the heels of the Democratic establishment. These Republican infiltrators compensate for their funding of the Green Party campaigns by encouraging irresponsible antics that rip the Greens apart. The Greens end up acting as little more than political Pinnochios, puppets who are naive enough to believe that they are real, with no one pulling the strings.

The more I stand back and try to take a wider perspective on American politics, the more I see that the system is dangerously out of equilibrium, and getting worse. The forces that knock our democracy to and fro are the wealthy conservative elites who spend a hundred times more than the twenty and thirty dollar checks the rest of us are able to write.

Our political system consists of a bunch of puppets putting on a puppet show about a bunch of puppets for us. The sad thing is that we’re not puppets. We’re real people, but the puppet show has us so enthralled that we’re begging to let the ultimate puppet masters tie strings around our ankles and wrists. Oh, how entertaining it feels as we dance back and forth to the beat that they set for us.

Well, the strings are getting tangled, and I have the nauseating feeling that we’re all of us so terribly tangled together that we’re about to fall down into a terrible, chaotic heap – and we’ll pummel ourselves trying to escape. In this vision, the only way out of this impending disaster seems to be to cut the strings tied around my body and get as far away from the whole mess as I can, as fast as I can.

Yet, there is no where else to go.

The truth is that I don’t give a fig about John Kerry or John Edwards. The three things I really care about are freedom, peace and justice – and it doesn’t seem that any of the puppet masters leading this insane dance consider those things to be important at all.

So, what the hell can we do?

The image of the puppet show fades and is replaced by a scene from the movie loved by toddlers everywhere: Finding Nemo. A net has surrounded the school of fish, and they’re being pulled in a tangled mass up to the surface. The fish are swimming in every way, in a panic that makes it all the easier to haul them in.

It’s up to Nemo, who isn’t even caught in the net, to swim in to that mass of panicked fish and try to convince them, one by one, to swim down all together so that they can pull the net loose and swim free again.

I’m not sure any longer that party politics gives us any real solution to the crisis of stampeding nationalism that is threatening to rip America apart. The only path that seems to have any chance of success is for dedicated citizens to break free of the dance choreographed by the conservative elites, take a deep breath, calm down, and then talk.

We can’t let our politicians do the talking for us any more. We must talk carefully to each other so that the fear upon which George W. Bush and his crew are thriving can be calmed. No single one of us can see the whole of the path out of this terrible mess, but I’m hoping that if we look togther, we can find the way to some much deserved peace.