Purple!

Finally, here's something interesting in the world of politics.

I haven't really been excited about politics in a long time... since well before the liberal Democrat masquerading as a moderate Democrat beat the moderate Democrat masquerading as a conservative Republican.

Well, not excited in a positive way. My political excitement these days is usually more of a negative excitement - you know, rants, diatribes, getting up on my soapbox -Righteous Indignation.

That's one of my stated themes here in this blog.

I don't mean to be cynical really, but as I see it, there's only two small things wrong with our political system: Democrats and Republicans. Actually, those are very large things and that is precisely part of the problem!

But, this business about the purple party excites me in a positive way. I know it's a pipe dream. There's no way the Demoblican Oligarchy that rules this country will ever let a third party happen. Their control is too entrenched, their financial stranglehold on the system is too overwhelming, their policies are designed (and have been designed for over a hundred years) expressly to keep upstart third parties from even gaining a foothold in the "free" political system.

Never mind that the Republican party started as, and almost became again, a "third party", never mind that a third party has once bested one of the "big two" in a presidential election, never mind that twice, possibly three times, a third party has earned enough votes to change the outcome of a presidential election. Also never mind that more Americans consider themselves moderate rather than either conservative or liberal and never mind that more Americans condider themselver neither Democrat nor Republican.

The time is right. We have the technology to now do this right. And we have the public interest. Folks are tired of red states and blue states. Folks are tired of divisiveness, folks are tired of... well, Democrats and Republicans who share roughly equally in the blame for getting this country into the mess that it's in today and has been for longer than I've been alive.

But it is a nice dream - to ponder, just for a moment, what our lives would be like if this country were in fact a democracy or a republic or a democratic-republic or in any way actually ruled by the people and for the people.It's the craziest thing I've ever heard!

Here are some more articles from New York on the third party movement:But Is A third Party Possible? by Ryan Lizza, andBuilding the Frankencandidate by John Heilemann.

These folks write about it much more eloquently than I can, so follow these links and read these articles. Yes, I'm telling you to stop reading my extraordinarily interesting ramblings to go read something else. I know, the mind wobbles (Kelly Bundy again) but this is important stuff!

Required reading.

Do it.