[SEQ RERUN] The Two-Party Swindle

[MinibearRex]

Today’s post, The Two-Party Swindle was originally published on 01 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Voters for either political party usually have more in common with each other than they do for the politicians they vote for. And yet, they support their own “team members” with fanatic devotion. Nobody is allowed to criticize their own team’s politicians, without their fellow voters accusing them of treason.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Cultish Countercultishness, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

[James_Miller]

until the Republifans and Demofans realize that in many ways they have more in common with other Voters than with “their” Politicians;

The 2004 U.S. Presidential election was fought between two members of Skull and Bones (Bush and Kerry), a small secret society at Yale.

[MinibearRex]

I have been blocked from editing the LW Wiki for the past week or so, for an unknown reason. I have been writing summaries for upcoming sequence posts, but have been unable to actually upload them. If someone could upload this summary to this page, it would be greatly appreciated.

[arundelo]

Done.

If you haven’t already, you might want to message gwern or Vladimir_Nesov and see if they can unblock you.

[Vladimir_Nesov]

It’s caused by some bug related to a new anti-spam feature Trike applied to the wiki (email confirmation of accounts). I reported the problem in this ticket (since then, I confirmed my own email, so the feature is indeed what I suspected it is)

[MinibearRex]

Thanks. Upvoted.

[fubarobfusco]

And I dare say the Big Mess is not likely to be cleaned up, until the Republifans and Demofans realize that in many ways they have more in common with other Voters than with “their” Politicians; or, at the very least, stop enthusiastically cheering for rich lawyers because they wear certain colors, and begin judging them as employees severely derelict in their duties.

Hmm … There seem to be a couple of movements started by disaffected Republifans and Demofans recently. One of them is explicitly based around the idea that rich lawyers aren’t being very effective employees of Voters; and that Voters need to take more time talking amongst themselves about their goals rather than cheering for a party. One of the biggest Politician-supporter rallying cries against this Voter group is the claim that any group that ever holds off on proposing solutions is incoherent and irrelevant.

[Costanza]

I’d be particularly interested in hearing a non-American perspective on this, especially in light of recent history. Perhaps it’s not so much a “two party” swindle so much as an anointed, supposedly meritocratic, political class-versus-the-rest-of-the-country swindle.

[Eugine_Nier]

until the Republifans and Demofans realize that in many ways they have more in common with other Voters than with “their” Politicians;

This article seems relevant.

regulations that apply to lots of other people turn out to be largely irrelevant to those who serve in Congress. This isn’t an exception to congressional practice. It is, far too often, business as usual.