Is a pragmatic third party even possible?

The intent of this blog is simple. It is to (i) honestly articulate failings of the two-party system, (ii) honestly describe how and why those failures appear to have come about and (iii) argue that the only real option for better outcomes is to form a pragmatic (non-ideological) third party. As envisioned here, the goal of a pragmatic third party would be to dislodge Democrats and/or Republicans from power here in California and ultimately elsewhere.

Base assumptions include belief that (i) neither party wants to change their ways of doing business as usual and (ii) business as usual failed in American politics at the state and national levels.

It boils down to how one sees politics. Some people reject the idea that forming a viable third party is possible. There is solid logic and reality behind that belief - it is hard, maybe impossible under current circumstances. On top of that, my limited forays into the realm of trying to persuade people to see things differently than what they already see, tells me that is will be hard (essentially impossible) to convince most people (maybe about 95-98%) that they are arguably wrong about much of anything, regardless of what unbiased facts or logic has to say. Most people firmly hold onto their ideas and opinions.

The whole concept of allowing facts and cold logic to dictate politics and views of reality may not be realistic. Humans are arguably much more emotional (irrational) beings than logical. Ideology (political and religious) and emotion has a powerful, maybe unshakable, grip on how most people see things in politics and most other areas of life as well.

If that view of reality is essentially correct, trying to form a political party focused on pragmatic problem solving while trying to downplay ideology and emotion may be a doomed proposition from the get go. What seems to be left is to acknowledge ideology and emotion, accept it and work with it as best as possible. For the Democratic and Republican parties, resistance to change is ferocious in view of political self-interest, special interests, their money and party ideology. The two parties themselves are powerful special interests with much at stake in maintaining the status quo. Why would they want to change anything? It goes without saying: Those elements, including the two parties, will fight against meaningful change.

We all know Democratic and Republican ideology. The other third parties out there now are all loaded with their own political and/or religious ideologies. A key aspect of Libertarian ideology hates big government and wants to go back to 1776 and maybe the blunderbuss as well. Socialist party ideology wants Socialism. Green party ideology wants whatever it is that Greens want. Nazi ideology is racist and nasty. And so on. All that, except the hate groups, seems about equally irrational and unpromising.

Given the boat loads of ideology and emotional fervor in existing third parties and the big two, the idea of a rational, non-ideological party seemed to make sense. At least, it would be a different approach to politics. Well, maybe in the abstract it makes sense.

But in the real world, a party grounded in unspun fact, logic and pragmatism may be just a pipe dream. Emotion and raw faith in ideology dominates regardless of whether the ideology is right or wrong. Where's the place for cold logic and unemotional reason in that world? Arguably, there is no major place for it. Presumably, that's why its so feeble now.

For much of the public, politics is more a source of entertainment than enlightenment. The two sides blow their ideological talking points at each other and then the endless bickering begins. Opposing ideologues talk right past each other and neither usually really understands what the other is saying. Ideas and solutions that do not fit the ideology of the two sides don't usually get serious consideration or even a passing mention. For the most part, political infotainment brings no new insights to the table. It also fails to bring clarity or needed context to the issues, most of which are complex and nuanced. Political infotainment is mostly polarizing, uncompromising spin and propaganda. The public remains ill-informed. And our politics continues to fail while our standard of living continues to slide.

They respectfully disagree

That's just political business as usual as I see it. Obviously, existing parties will vehemently disagree. Well, if my view is so wrong, then why did business as usual fail so badly? Too much reliance on cold logic and unspun facts? Yeah, right. And pigs fly too. Recently, we had everything needed to stay out of trouble, while everyone else had little or nothing. Despite that, here we are 65 years later - up to our eyeballs in alligators and discontent with politics as usual.

How does one explain the situation other than to conclude that some things about the ways we do things are flawed and failing? If that's true, then what do we do about it? More of the same or try something different? Human nature being what it is, we just might be doomed to more of the same. That would be a shame. I think more of the same would be far less than optimal. Unfortunately, it looks like we are going to find out, like it or not.

Emotion dictates reality; An example

A prior post argued that emotion largely dominates reason or logic in U.S. politics, particularly for hard core partisans and ideologues. That was support for the argument that emotion (irrational thinking) is a key element behind the vast differences between how the left and right perceive reality. Emotion connected to firmly held ideology and, to some extent self-interest, makes it easy to rationalize a world view consistent with the chosen ideology.

That appears to be the case even though reality distorted by ideology and/or self-interest often bears little resemblance to reality undistorted by any ideology. Its just a matter of human nature. It doesn't apply just to politics - it permeates everything.

Anecdotal but informative

Its easy to be misled by anecdotal stories and personal experience. However, there are times when an anecdote accurately reflects a reality. Consider the following. Over the past years, a professional colleague became a Russia-o-phile. California Moderates (CM) doesn't now why, but it happened. Colleague, not a communist, but a hard core true left liberal, got caught up in the exuberance of it all and even wrote letters to Pravda criticizing some aspects of various U.S. foreign and domestic policies. To the amazement of all, Pravda published the wacky letters.

In conversations with Colleague about Russia and recent history, Colleague stated that Stalin was a real hero and a relatively nice guy. To say the least, that was a stunning insight, especially coming from a well-educated, decent and outwardly sane person formally grounded in logic and reason. Puzzling indeed.

Having an inquiring mind with a need to know, CM asked how on Earth anyone could come to that bizarre conclusion. If memory serves, Stalin killed more Russians than Hitler's total kill. Colleague's response, based on research including reading multiple history and biography books, was simple. If Stalin hadn't done what he did to his own people, Russia would have fallen to the Germans and then it would have been even worse for the poor suffering Russian population. They all would have been exterminated.

Stalin was a good guy according to that version of reality. CM simply can't accept that version, even if it is better researched than CM's version. Maybe CM is mistaken, but its version of reality is that Stalin was an ice-cold mass murderer who acted out of self-interest first and national preservation second or not at all.

Well, there you have it. Two versions of a historical reality. Good guy and bad guy. Both can't be completely right because they are mutually exclusive. One has to be grounded more in emotion, spun fact, ignorance and/or illogic than the other. The question is, which is more accurate? An authoritative answer can come from a real historian, not Colleague or myself. I am not going to spend the time to figure that one out. CM tries to be accurate and well-informed, but this point not that important to me. CM simply thinks it is right and Colleague has suffered too many concussions playing some sort of rough game. On this point, CM opinion is that Colleague is completely nuts.

The difference between CM and Colleague is that if a real historian comes along and says (with proof) 'Calmoderate, you nincompoop, Stalin was a selfless, nice guy. All that slaughter was necessary - see here's the proof. Pull your head out.' CM would accord that fair weight, try to figure out how CM could be so wrong and reassess its opinion. But if the historian told Colleague that Stalin was a ruthless mass murderer, Colleague the amateur would tell historian the expert that he was full of baloney.

That's how emotion works. That's how ideology works. Its all just human biology. If Colleague's reality is wrong, Colleague the ideologue, can't easily accept that because it undermines whatever view of Russia exists in Colleague's arguably messed up head. Assuming CM is wrong, that can be faced and accepted more easily because CM doesn't have any ideology to defend or justify to anyone. That's just how pragmatism works. Colleague is boxed in by sacred belief, right or wrong. Colleague is enslaved to emotion and ideology. CM is free.

CO could do another anecdote about the mom who refuses to get her kids vaccinated out of fear of autism, but that would be overkill.

Scary

The pragmatic free thinker is scary, right? Scary because you don't know where that free mind is going to go. By contrast, you usually know exactly where the ideologue is going. That's the subtle always-present allure of giving in to emotion and ideology. But can you see how that emotion and ideology could lead a whole society right over the cliff edge because the cliff edge looked like a beautiful mountain meadow full of wild flowers when in fact it was a mine field?

Who you gonna call?

Who would you rather trust in politics and political problem solving? The rock solid ideologue who stands on rock solid principle and absolutely and clearly sees mostly black and white? Or, the wobbly, pragmatic non-ideologue who sees black and white when its there but mostly grey because that's what unspun reality mostly looks like from that vantage point? Your choice.

Politics: Emotional or rational?

Way back in the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed that American society was grounded in reason, science and pragmatism, for the most part. That view of reality came from someone in the middle class in a homogeneous Midwest population lucky enough to attend high quality public schools and colleges. Prosperity seemed to be there for the taking, if you worked for it. There was some reasonable degree of consensus among the public on most political and social issues. When there wasn't consensus, there was enough accommodation for things to appear to function reasonably well. Those were the appearances, at least. It doesn't look that way any more.

Maybe it never was like that. The Midwest was and and still is relatively isolated and not representative of everything else. Self-delusion is part of human nature and comes easy because it tends to be unconscious. People believe what they want because its comfortable. By comparison, facing reality is uncomfortable and it takes conscious effort to see reality based on reason and objectivity. There's the conflict: Emotions, like comfortable, unconscious self-delusion and rigid belief in ideology (political or religious) compete for the mind's view of reality with disquieting even-handed reason. These days, emotion dominates most issues most of the time. Reality usually loses to fantasy. Reason just doesn't seem to compete well with emotion. That's probably always been the case.

So what?

Regardless of where "truth" lies, does it matter? Why should it be of any concern that people tend to see what they want, not what reality actually is? After all, when someone believes something that isn't true, why should anyone else question it? Whose business is it? Well, it can matter a lot.

Whose business it is depends on what the false belief is and how it affects others. In politics, false reality arguably is the basis for a lot of political policy and that is one root cause for a lot of failure in politics. False beliefs in politics are every one's business because they lead to political policies that can be good, bad or neutral. If you disagree with the proposition that our political reality is littered with fantasy, listen to what Democrats and Republicans have to say about each other. Hard core Democrats know the goals of some Republicans wanting to drown the government in a bathtub and massive spending cuts on non-military are necessary. Hard core Republicans know that Democrats are destroying the American economy and our way of life.

Those views are largely incompatible. They therefore can't both be right - one or both of them has to be living a fantasy. In view of their clear track records of failure, it is pretty easy to argue that they both live a fantasy. Their false worlds are largely built on rigid, sacred political and religious ideology and loads of hypocrisy about public service coming before public service. Unless you are lucky, you can't efficiently solve a problem you don't clearly see or understand. That's just common sense. Given our disconnects from reality, it is no surprise our political policies and institutions continue to fail.

There is no authority on reality, right?

Can anyone say what reality is and claim authority, especially in view of the vast gulfs in how different people see things? Yes. That can be done if (i) one's personal biases and ideologies are acknowledged and consciously set aside (very hard for hard core partisans), (ii) true facts are acknowledged and accorded fair and reasonable weight (also hard for partisans) and (iii) the best competing policy arguments flowing from the facts are honestly acknowledged and accorded accorded fair and reasonable weight (essentially impossible for partisans, hence their vast differences). Of course, that recipe isn't perfect so how can what comes from that be accorded more weight than what the partisans see?

It gets weight because it is grounded in fact and honest assessment of all reasonable alternatives, not just the usual narrow battle between the sacred ideology of the left and right. We don't seriously consider all reasonable alternatives and we arguably have political failure from that lazy business as usual mentality. What partisans give us has no moral authority in view of partisan failures. Unless one likes the situation we are in, it is easy to see that something is wrong. One of the things wrong is the sloppy, lazy tendency of many Americans to substitute comfortable fantasy for unsettling reality. If people don't like the implication of some fact or policy argument, they deny it, ignore it or distort it into something more easily dealt with. Political business as usual gave off the appearance of success in the past, but the fantasy of success is looking a lot less real now that things have been bad for a while and may stay that way for some time.

The political tide is going out and lots of political fantasies are beginning to look like they were out there swimming without clothes. Partisans will see nothing ususual as the tide recedes - their fantasies will still look just fine while the opposing fantasies will still be ugly and naked. Those of us capable of seeing reality are probably not going to like what we are going to see from either side.