<nettime> Third Party Politics, or After the Republi-crat Orgy

[Nicholas Ruiz III <editor@intertheory.org>]

December 22, 2009
The Metaphysics of Capital
http://intertheory.org/blog/


Third Party Politics, or After the Republi-crat Orgy

Jean Baudrillard once posed the question to himself, what to do after
the orgy? Tongue in cheek, yes, but the point is more profound that it
at first reveals. First, Baudrillard meant 'orgy' - broadly construed,
of course.

For him, writing on the cusp of 1990, and reflecting upon the previous
century or so, the moment of excess in question was that of the
liberation of everything - politics, production, war, destruction,
sex, women, children, art, unconscious drives, capitalism and crisis -
total liberation as acceleration into the void of possibilities. And
then what?

The point is, for our purposes in considering American politics, the
twenty-first century arrived and the Republi-crat orgy continues.
As does the crisis wrought by every excess they have imagined and
in many respects, realized. Most importantly, the uncontrolled and
unrestrained stranglehold that Democrats and Republicans have on the
political process in the US threatens to drive America off a moral,
fiscal - and metaphysical cliff. What would that mean? It would mean
the enactment of an 'America' in absentia. In fact, for may Americans,
such is the reality as it exists already.

Few would argue that the two party system is a benefit to us, while we
argue that monopolies are rotten for the maintenance of integrity and
fairness in every other enterprise.

The two parties, taken together, constitute a systemic Republi-crat
malaise, wherein each party - notwithstanding the frequently cute
quarrels and media mudfests - essentially rubberstamps each other's
policies by default. Difference in such a system is reduced to catchy,
emotional sound bites, which serve to polarize viewers, spectators and
ultimately, voters, while simulating difference - enacting a facade of
political diversity.

In the end, the winners in such a set-up - that amounts to a
perpetual, media-sparring match for cap feathers among the
self-appointed wealthy and commercial society elected, or 'electable,'
contestants - are the corporations, who infuse enough capital to the
Republi-crat majority to decide the outcomes of political policy
questions. So the corporations (and aristocratic interests) get what
they want, at the expense of the rank and file public, year after
year, ad infinitum.

Criticism of the Republi-crat system as it stands is muted as comedy,
or essentially muzzled, by an equal process of elimination of all
third party perspectives compliments of monopolized corporate media.

In 2010, voters should vote their conscience, by seeking out
otherpolitical party options as a matter of principle. Expect
different policies, when voting for different candidates, from
different political parties. If you wish for more of the same policies
that are running America into the ground - then vote, once again, for
another Republi-crat.

But if you wish for the idea of progress that has disappeared, or
the prospect of prosperity that has disappeared, or the idea of
politics that has disappeared - and instead all of which continue,
as Baudrillard once suggested, as a game in secret indifference to
what is truly at stake in all of these concepts - then vote for a
third party candidate who speaks to your heart. A guarantee for a
progressive turn? No, of course not - but in all certainty, a viable
chance, at least, that has not already been decided upon in advance by
the Republi-crat involution.


 Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
NRIII for Congress 2010
http://intertheory.org/nriiiforcongress2010.html
____________________________________
Editor, Kritikos
http://intertheory.org





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