The Duopolist's Pragmatic Realism is Cynical Opportunism

When rationalizing their capitulation to the Republican and Democratic Parties, partisans of the duopoly justify their lack of principle on the basis of pragmatic realism. As I have shown on multiple occasions, however, their pragmatism is opportunism, and their realism is cynicism. This was especially clear in the liberal Democratic response to the 2009 Iraq war supplemental bill. In an article for Dissident Voice, Ashley Sanders, former youth spokesperson for Ralph Nader's 2008 election campaign, reflects on the passage of the bill and utilizes the occasion to pick apart the contradictions and the hypocrisies that constitute our duopolized politics and its corresponding ideology:

an ostensibly anti-war President (a lie) appeals to an ostensibly anti-war party (another lie) to pass a war bill that causes ostensibly anti-war activists to feign shock, which somehow increases the sentiment that the Republicans (who largely voted against the bill) are the sponsor of all political evil. This strangulated logic is our latest and prettiest consequence of believing in parties more than principles. But more than that, it is the consequence of rejecting in the name of realism what we trumpet rhetorically: that politics can be about truth.

I am writing to reject this realism, and refuse to call this rejection naive. I reject it knowing that this is not an issue of Democrats or Republicans — that any party will sacrifice truth for its own preservation. I reject it because believing that it is realistic to believe in amoral politicians and sociopathic self-interest on a public scale while rejecting amorality and sociopathy on an individual scale has bred more blood and disaster than any other philosophy I can think of. To protect this mad logic with the myth that we have prevailed — that justice has been won — makes it even more certain that wars will continue and Congresses will continue to fund them.