An Informed Citizenry: The Best Defense Against the Reproduction of the Two-Party State

At Leflore County Oklahoman, William argues that the rise of an independent majority and the continuing decline in identification with either the Republican or Democratic Parties, except among partisan dead-enders of the two-party state, is a function of advances in communications technology and social networking. Back in August, I highlighted a similar argument put forward by Ryan O'Neal at Scoop 44, who held that the information age will witness "the rise of the third party" in the United States. At LCO, William writes in part:

In order to understand this growth, one must admit what the Democrats and Republicans are not ready to admit. Neither member of this Two Party System represent the people anymore. We are now able to assimilate significantly more information than ever before in the history of politics. We're kept up to date via multiple news sources of varying slant. We have breaking alerts, aggregates, tweets, blogs, etc. The news is not so easily controlled as when there were concise media groups delivering via a few newspapers fed through singular wire media and a couple of broadcast news channels. As such, people are exposed to a lot more of what goes on in each party . . .

In short, we've reached a level of information and technology that allows each individual citizen to see where each party does or does not line up with their way of thinking. This is allowing us to realize that if we pick one issues out of 100 important issues, we can align with a party. However, if we take all of the issues into account, suddenly neither party has a consistent stand on what we view as right . . .

The fact that both Democrats and Republicans are ultimately working for the good of their party at the expense of the people has provided momentum for these Independent parties . . . Should Democrats and Republicans be afraid that people, exposed to information, are able to see the truth and turn away from the party that has turned away from them? Should the people "waste their vote" on an Independent candidate when they can more comfortably "waste their vote" on a candidate that they already know is corrupt and untrustworthy?