Characterizing herself as a “moderate with a brain,” Bridget Phetasy writes that things have gotten so bad that now “every vote is considered a statement on your personal identity and worth.” Her article in Spectator USA, “The battle cry of the politically homeless,” paints a bleak picture.
“Your value, who you are, what kind of world you want, whether or not you’re a good person or an evil person … it all boils down to which lever you pull. Damn your reasons. Vote for the ‘right’ person, or else you are a fascist, or a racist, or a globalist, or a communist.”
Ms. Phetasy expresses fatigue at “being afraid to voice my own opinions, of knowing how saying the wrong thing at a barbecue while someone is filming on their iPhone could result in a nationwide clarion call for my head on a pike.”
I, however, feel not one whit of a compulsion to cave to what Phetasy says is the “totalitarian-like” demand of the two parties for “devotion to their ideology.”
How did I become so blessed?
I know that Trumpians have almost no way to rationally defend their major positions — protectionism being the tippy-top of an Everest of an iceberg. Meanwhile, the far left is worse, flushing the old wine of socialism through the new-but-leaky bottles of racist (“anti-racist”) resentment.
Can we really fear such intellectual paper tigers?
There is a way out: Ranked choice voting. Witless partisanship rests on the A/not‑A (=B/not‑B) duality rut of the two-party system, into which I have never purchased admission. None of us are required to — and won’t be tempted to once our absurd electoral system is swapped for one not programmed to create false binaries.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Photo by Aaron Jacobs on flickr
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