A June 29 Associated Press/NORC finds that 85% of Americans — including 92% of self-identified Republicans and 78% of self-identified Democrats — say “things in this country are headed in the wrong direction.”

Meanwhile, notional support for a “third” political party remains high — 62% as of last year’s Gallup Survey — yet no actually existing party outside the Democratic and Republican establishments seems able to get much traction.

The Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and numerous smaller third parties have labored in the vineyard of politics for decades (the Prohibition Party since 1869!) without ever coming close to shattering the “major party” duopoly.

Recent startups, also seemingly going nowhere, include Andrew Yang’s Forward Party and the New Jersey Moderate Party, both of which seem more inclined to endorse simpatico “major party” candidates than field their own.

Why can’t a third party break through? There are plenty of reasons, but they all come back to the fact that the “major party” duopoly is actually a monopoly.

The Republicans and Democrats aren’t really two separate parties. They’re a single ruling party comprised of two large feuding factions which continually re-balance power and divvy up the spoils between themselves through a burlesque of “representative democracy” rigged, by force of law, to preclude meaningful competition.

From gerrymandering to preserve “safe” districts for each of the two factions, to a death grip on candidate access to ballots (which, until the late 19th century, were printed by actual parties/candidates, or hand-written by voters), to the natural inclination of big campaign money to go to the party in power rather than  to upstarts and rebels, The Republican/Democratic uniparty guards its prerogatives as jealously as any banana republic or communist dictatorship.

For all the talk of “polarization” in American politics, the uniparty monopoly occupies the broad and massive center, dividing the largest and most powerful constituencies between its two factions and doling out largess to those constituencies.

“Third” parties have difficulty making inroads into those large constituencies. The “major party” benefits may be unsatisfactory, but they’re birds in hand. “Third” parties are limited to the birds in the bush, the smaller constituencies the uniparty doesn’t consider worth catering to.

The last really major American political realignment took place in the 1850s when the Whigs disintegrated due to their inability to unite on slavery (and Democrats split along north/south lines on the same issue), making room for the ascent of the Republicans.  And within a few decades, the Democrats and Republicans had coalesced as described above to make sure no such thing ever happened again.

Absent an issue of overwhelming concern to Americans which neither uniparty faction can co-opt for its own use, we’re never likely to vote our way out of this monopoly. It will end when the United States ends.

But that doesn’t make third parties useless. As we’ve seen with issues like marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage, third parties bring forward those issues the uniparty has to co-opt to remain in power.

Which is better than nothing, I guess.  But not much. And fortunately  not sustainable forever.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“The decisions we have taken in Madrid,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said as a summit of the alliance’s members closed in Madrid on June 30, “will ensure that our Alliance continues to preserve peace, prevent conflict, and protect our people and our values.”

Decisions taken at the summit include inviting Sweden and Finland to join as NATO’s 31st and 32nd member states, an increase in “high readiness” forces to more than 300,000, more money in general, and of course more money for non-member state Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

None of these, of course, will “preserve peace” or “prevent conflict,” and given the last 30 years of the alliance’s history, even the notion that they’ll “protect” the people of NATO member states is dubious. That’s not what NATO does these days.

What NATO does these days is constantly attempt to remake the world in the image of “liberal democracy,” very loosely defined as whatever the organization’s member regimes happen to want at any given moment.

Since the  disintegration of the Soviet Union  and  dissolution of the Warsaw Pact — NATO’s original betes noires — in 1991, the alliance has grown like Topsy  with new member states located far from the North Atlantic, all while launching or joining in numerous  wars of choice in the Balkans, in the Middle East, in Central Asia, and in Africa.

Characterizing NATO as a “collective security” or “defense” coalition these days is pure fiction. It’s an alliance for global conquest and US/European hegemony, and that’s all it is. The criterion for NATO military  intervention is no longer, per Article 5 of its charter, an actual attack on a member state, but rather any refusal — actual or potential — to slavishly obey the edicts of the alliance or its heavyweight regimes.

Think what you may of Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, his stated concerns about Ukraine potentially joining this violent supranational gang and bringing it right up to Russia’s border were completely understandable. That war might have been avoided if not for NATO’s obsession with constant expansion.

NATO is a clear, present, and constant danger to world peace.  It outlived its notional usefulness as anything else more than three decades ago.

The United States in particular has no conceivable legitimate interest in remaining a NATO member.  With no closely located enemies of military significance, and with the power to project more force “over the horizon” than any other power on Earth at need, the only things it gets out of NATO membership are the kinds of foreign entanglements George Washington and Thomas Jefferson warned it against.

As for the European powers, if they want to form a military alliance, perhaps under the European Union umbrella, well, that’s their business. They should do it at their own expense and with their own military personnel, not with American blood and treasure at stake.

The first step in disbanding NATO and eliminating it as a threat to global peace is for the US to depart the alliance. The sooner the better.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

It’s a grisly affair: Dozens of immigrants locked in a semi-trailer in San Antonio, Texas, apparently abandoned by those attempting to smuggle them into the United States. After their cries for help were heard and rescuers arrived, 48 were found dead at the scene, four more died shortly thereafter, and 16 were hospitalized.

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pronounces himself “heartbroken,” but doesn’t seem inclined to apologize for the “unprecedented” operation he launched less than three weeks ago in “an all-of-government effort to attack the smuggling organizations.” As of that time, DHS bragged, nearly 2,000 smugglers had been arrested in the previous eight weeks.

Texas governor Greg Abbott declares that “these deaths are on [US president Joe] Biden” — not because Biden is ultimately responsible for the “unprecedented operation” leading directly to outcomes like this, but because (in Abbott’s vivid imagination, anyway) Biden pursues “open border” policies.

But if the US government pursued the “open borders” policy mandated in its Constitution,  those immigrants wouldn’t have been locked in a semi-trailer in the first place, nor would their drivers have abandoned them, presumably after suspecting that they were immediate targets of  Mayorkas’s “unprecedented operation.”

Instead, they’d have arrived  in the US alive, in good health, and without fear of abduction by Mayorkas’s or Abbott’s thugs.

They’d have arrived the way any of us arrive anywhere — on foot, by bicycle or scooter, motorcycle, car,  bus, plane — and largely, like all of us, without incident.

Why didn’t they? Because American politicians know that supporting government lawlessness on immigration gets them votes.

A vote for a non-“open borders” politician — these days, that means pretty much any Republican or Democrat — is a vote for mass murder.

If you happen to believe in a deity who watches and judges us, remember that the next time you fill out a ballot.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY