Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
A majority of Democrats want a third major political party to be formed in America. An overwhelming majority of independents do. But only 38% of Republicans do. That’s according to Gallup’s October 26th article “Majority in U.S. Still Say a Third Party Is Needed”.
54% of Democrats do, and 72% of independents do. That 54% among Democrats is the highest figure ever, since Gallup started polling this question in 2003, when both of America’s political Parties endorsed invading Iraq. At that time, only 38% of Democrats wanted there to be a major new political party formed. (This means that in 2003, the vast majority of Democrats, and not only an overwhelming majority of Republicans, favored or at least thought to be acceptable, invading Iraq — a country that had never invaded nor even threatened to invade U.S. — they wanted, or at least accepted, that America commit the international war crime of “Aggression” or “War of Aggression”. It was clearly illegal invasion that both American political Parties are guilty of having perpetrated; it wasn’t only guilt by Republicans, though Republicans supported it much more than did Democrats. In March 2017, Yale University even went so far as to publish a ‘justification’ of non-murderous aggressionsbut failed to cite any historical examples of such; the article even condemned Libya’s effort to defend itself against NATO’s 2011 invasion, and called it “the Libyan action against NATO,” which could have given Joseph Goebbels a good belly-laugh. But that’s Yale. It’s like Hitler’s Germany’s having blamed Poland’s Government in 1939 for Germany’s invasion. “The invasion was referred to by Germany as the 1939 Defensive War.” All of America’s invasions since at least 2003 have similarly been ‘defensive’ in Newspeak, such as that Yale article.) In 2003, only 22% of Republicans wanted such a new party formed. (Republicans were virtually united in wanting the U.S. to invade Iraq.) And only 56% — the lowest percentage ever found by Gallup — of independents wanted such a new party formed, in 2003.
Ever since 2003, there has been an enduring decline in Americans’ trust in the U.S. Government itself. In 2004, which was just before the reality started to sink in, among Americans, that America had committed a war-crime by invading Iraq — that no weapons of mass destruction had actually existed there as the U.S. President had promised; that there was no way in which this invasion was ‘defensive’ — 52% of Americans in Gallup’s ongoing polls of confidence in U.S. institutions still had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the U.S. Presidency. In 2005, that became 44%. In 2006, it was 33%. In 2007, it was 25%. In 2018, it is back up to 37% (but still well below the 52% in 2004). The similar figures for trusting Congress were 30% in 2004, 22% in 2005, 19% in 2006, 14% in 2007, and 11% today. The similar figures for trusting Newspapers were 30% in 2004, 28% in 2005, 30% in 2006, 22% in 2007, and 23% today. So, apparently, Americans blame the President and Congress far more than the ‘news’-media that stenographically transmit the Government’s lies to them. The break-point for the historic downturn in Americans’ trust of the U.S. Government was 2003. And Americans now are forgetting any ‘lessons’ that might have been learned from the U.S. Government’s clear turn toward fascism since 2003. America therefore has now become a country that increasingly accepts itself as being fascist. Trump’s being the U.S. President is merely another sign of that fact. What’s even worse is that he was running in 2016 against a Democratic Party fascist (Hillary Clinton); both choices were fascist. (Americans use the euphemism “neoconservative” to refer to fascism, and support by U.S. officials for it has become bipartisan, such as it was in the Clinton-Trump contest.)
As fascism is thus being accepted by the American people, the individuals in both Parties who want America to be a democracy, are abandoning both Parties; and, so, now, independents outnumber each of the two Parties. However, the real problem isn’t the number of parties; it’s the increasing control of the U.S. Government by the billionaires — and that is fascism. The move away from the two fascist Parties is no solution; only the defeat of fascism in America can be that. But few Americans even know what fascism actually is. It’s not a political-party problem; it’s an ideological problem. And it is bipartisan. Making it tripartisan wouldn’t help, at all. But disenchantment with political parties rises to the extent that democracy declines.
Thus, the latest Gallup poll is reporting that ever since 2003, the percentage of Democrats who want a third party has risen from 38% to 54%, and the percentage of independents who do has risen from 54% to 72%, and the percentage of Republicans who do has risen from 22% to 38%. Consequently, now, not only are independents (the category that has always majority-favored the formation of a third party) dissatisfied with both Parties, but 54% of Democrats also are dissatisfied with both Parties. The percentage of Republicans who are dissatisfied with both Parties is 1.73 times what it was when America invaded Iraq in 2003. The similar Democratic percentage has increased 1.42 times. The similar independent percentage has increased 1.29 times. (Perhaps that low figure of 1.29 is because so many Republicans became independent after their Party had led America into invading and destroying Iraq — they’d finally had enough of the Republican Party, and this might be the main reason why there are more independents now than either Democrats or Republicans. But there has also been a decline in the percentage of Americans who are Democrats, not only in the Republican percentage.) Thus, apparently, more Republicans became independents after that invasion than Democrats did. According to Pew’s polling, Republican-Party self-identification between 1994 and 2017 peaked during 2002-2005, which was the gung-ho-for-invasion period, and has declined since then, while independent self-identification bottomed during 2002-2005 and has risen since then. (Gallup’s polling shows the same, except that since 2014, there has been a trend back toward the two major Parties. Yet, still, ever since 2008, there has been a larger percentage of the U.S. electorate who are independents than who are either Democrats or Republicans.) Consequently, today’s Republican voters seem especially likely to be a self-selected group of only the most extreme supporters of aggressive invasion — the voters who still support invasions such as of Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-now, and Yemen 2016-now. Today’s Republican voters are the military-industrial complex’s dream of a political base, who will support any invasion by the United States; they’re terrific for U.S. weapons-sales. Any Republican today who doesn’t support control of the U.S. Government by the profiteers of war is an extreme rarity — rarer even than was the case in 2003.
The previous peaks in Democrats’ support for the formation of a new and seriously contending U.S. political party to be formed, were 50% in 2006, and 52% in 2017. So, this new 54% figure is the highest ever, among Democrats.
The 22% of Republicans who in 2003 favored the formation of a serious new party was by far the lowest ever (since the first of Gallup’s polls on this topic were taken). Between 2007 and 2017, Republicans and Democrats were close to tied in their percentages favoring the formation of a new and serious political party emerging. But both during 2003-2006 and right now in 2018, Republican voters are so strongly satisfied with their Party, they don’t want a third serious party formed. However, Republicans aren’t nearly as satisfied with their Party now under Trump as they were in 2003 when another Republican President (George W. Bush) led America to invade Iraq. Perhaps if the current Republican President will kick U.N. inspectors out of a country today in order to start bombing it, he will be able to unite his Party as much as Bush did.
The all-time-high of 54% of Democrats, who want there to be a new seriously contending party, constitutes a reliable indication that most Democrats today are profoundly dissatisfied with their Party. Democratic candidates thus could lose the mid-terms by a lower voting-turnout than for Republican candidates.
The only two times when a majority of Republicans wanted a third party formed were 2011 and 2013, both times around 52% favoring that. Both times, the electoral prospects for the Republican Party seemed to be especially poor. However, there has been no time in Gallup’s polling when as high as 54% of Republicans favored the formation of a new party. But given the margin of error in these polls, it could have happened, even though it’s not shown in Gallup’s numbers.
The record-high percentage of Democrats who favor a new party might similarly be an indication of the Democratic Party’s failure to win elections, instead of an indication of any dissatisfaction due to the Party’s war-mongering. If that is the case, and if the Democratic Party fails to win control of the House this November 6th, then that 54% figure could go even higher. A billionaire such as Wall Street’s Michael Bloomberg might then do it (run for President without major-Party support), or else a popular progressive like Bernie Sanders might do it, or two such candidates might simultaneously attempt to do it, which would almost certainly produce a Republican or Democratic victory in 2020 (since both Parties have existing structures in place to win national elections, and no new party could successfully compete against both that and simultaneously another major unaffiliated contender). Therefore, yet again, America’s fate could still be determined behind closed doors, when the final election-ballot options are decided by the billionaires, and the existing two-party dictatorship would continue on as before.
The failure of America isn’t due to its having too few parties, but instead to the way that these parties determine whom their respective nominees will be. It’s controlled by and serves the billionaires. It’s not a democracy; it is an aristocracy. (Most dictatorships are aristocracies. By contrast, no democracy is controlled by its super-rich.) Therefore, anyone who calls the U.S. a “democracy” is either ignorant or else a liar. It was democratic, in a limited sense, at some time in the past, but it no longer is, at all. In fact, even by comparison with some of the nations that the U.S. Government alleges to be dictatorships (so as to be able to target those nations for conquest), the U.S. Government is more of a dictatorship than they are.
The reason America is a war-criminal nation is that it’s not a democracy. The public never profit from wars; only extremely wealthy people can do that. The major war-criminals are the nation’s leaders and the aristocrats whom they secretly represent. Adding a new party cannot solve that basic problem; it would be irrelevant to the problem. War-making is enormously profitable, unless the government alone controls the design, manufacture, and sale, of its war-weapons (in which case there are no stockholders to become enriched by invading). As Micah Zenko recently found (and documented here), the U.S. Government’s international relations are controlled by and serve America’s military-industrial complex, not by nor for anyone else. And it serves not only American but also foreign billionaires, called ‘allies’. But in order to have an alliance of other countries’ governments buying your companies’ weapons, that alliance needs to have a country or group of countries (such as, for America: Russia, China, and Iran, and their allies) that are accepted as being targets for those weapons to be used against. It’s serving billionaires not only in the U.S. but in its allied countries. And it causes “War of Aggression”, such as has become routine for the U.S. to perpetrate since 2003.
Alliances are between aristocracies, not between publics. This is why America’s Founders shunned “entangling alliances.” They wanted there to be no military treaties such as NATO. And even as recently as World War II the United States was allied with imperial England and communist USSR against fascist Japan, Germany, and Italy — but there weren’t any “entangling alliances” formed at that time. However, after America’s military-industrial complex (MIC) took over immediately afterward, there are (starting with NATO). And it’s steadily getting even worse. All military treaties need to be eliminated, because they are agreements to invade. They benefit only weapons-firms. They should be outlawed by the U.N. But, of course, any militarily controlled governments on the Security Council would block it. Any such nation (the blockers) should then be sanctioned and boycotted by all countries that are not. Military treaties represent only aristocratic gangs, not real democracies, and are therefore threats to peace — they have no place in a decent world.
Harry S. Truman was the beginning of American democracy’s end. What there was of American democracy terminated when FDR did. Everything since then is merely rule by the billionaires and their MIC. America’s Founders had excellent reason for doing all they could to prevent the formation of any “standing army” — professional soldiers. If anything violates the U.S. Constitution’s original intent, then today’s U.S. military does. It has become the tail that wags today’s American dog.
A standing army represents only the aristocracy. Therefore, right now, U.S. spends around half of the entire world’s military budget and spends over a trillion dollars annually on ‘defense’ and far less on everything else, except adding around a trillion dollars annually to the U.S. federal debt (so as to be able to pay that trillion-dollar-plus annually on ‘defense’), which also benefits only today’s investors. All of that ‘defense’ and debt are in order to benefit only billionaires and their armies of lobbyists etc. Like Jimmy Carter said, “Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations”.
Any oligarchically-run country will have high economic opportunity for the aristocrats (oligarchs), and low economic opportunity for the public; so, this U.S. waste of over half of the U.S. Government’s discretionary spending (for the weapons-making firms and profits to their owners) means there’s a continuous economic siphon, from the public to the aristocracy, and domestic policies can also only be regressive, not at all progressive. An example is one prominent Republican U.S. Senator who explained why he was supporting passage of the largest U.S. military budget in history, and said, on 7 February 2018, “I’d rather we didn’t have to do as much on non-defense”: he wished that the shrinking non-‘defense’ percentage would shrink yet more than it did. Fascists want more for the military, and less for everything else. Some call this ‘libertarian’, but none call it “fascist,” because the U.S. waged war against fascism when FDR was President. Therefore, such euphemisms are being used for referring to it, in the wake of the defeat of the fascist powers in WW II. Almost no one calls himself “fascist” now.
America’s problems run far deeper than the number of political parties, and won’t necessarily change if that number becomes changed. The question that Gallup asked here is politically interesting, but is irrelevant to any solution for America’s actual problems.
Throughout the world, the public’s enemy is the aristocracy (and its hired agents). Where such an enemy controls the government, it’s a fascist regime. Any country that’s controlled by them is a dictatorship, not a democracy, and therefore war-profiteers end up controlling the government; and this is America’s (and the world’s) biggest problem.
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For anyone who is interested in knowing the extent to which the invasion of Iraq was a Republican initiative but was supported by both parties (a bipartisan crime), here are some relevant data:
Prior to the Iraq invasion, 58% of Democratic Senators and 39.2% of Democratic Representatives supported it. 98% of Republican Senators and 96.4% of Republican Representatives did. So, there was a united Republican Party but a very divided Democratic Party, on whether to go the fascist route on Iraq. The two Parties’ publics were similarly split. A CBS poll during 7-9 March 2003 found that invading Iraq was favored by 73% of Republicans, 52% of independents, and 42% of Democrats.Then, on 15-16 March, it found these percentages to be 73%, 45%, and 34%.
But right after the invasion, even Democrats overwhelmingly endorsed this aggressive war: A Los Angeles Times poll during 2-3 April 2003 found that the invasion was endorsed by 95% of Republicans, 72% of independents, and 70% of Democrats.
In 2006, Politico asked Senators their 2002 and 2006 views on invading Iraq:
Republican Senators still overwhelmingly (excepting only Chuck Hagel, Gordon Smith, and Olympia Snowe) supported it.
19 Democrats (including the independent Bernie Sanders) voted against it and they all remained against it.
12 Democrats voted for it but by 2006 regretted it: Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Tom Carper, Chris Dodd, Diane Feinstein, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, Bill Nelson, and John D. Rockefeller.
9 Democrats (including independent Joseph Lieberman) voted for it and didn’t regret it: Maria Cantwell, Byron Dorgan, Tim Johnson, Joseph Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and Hillary Clinton.
Democratic Party voters did not reject Democratic Senators who had voted for it — not even ones like Clinton who continued supporting a fascist invasion. Therefore, the Party’s voters accepted fascism and fascists. Democratic Party voters, like Republican Party voters, accept being lied-to — even lied into a war (like had happened to Germans, under Hitler).
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity
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