by Paul Benson
When voting, we are left to choose between red or blue. Willie Fowler, Parkland Political Science Professor, says, that recently a lot of people have been
quite “disenchanted” with the election process. A lot of this disenchantment might be from the political dichotomy in the party system that results in an oversimplification of stances and policies. A voter might agree with one stance a politician has, but then completely disagrees with them on another stance. Some politicians have points you agree with, but are at the same time funded by corporations with stances you disagree with. There might be independent candidates who have a majority of people’s interests in mind, but do not get the same financial backing to support their platform to speak on. Life is not as simple as binary deconstructions. There’s more to life than just, black or white, right or wrong, masculinity or femininity, love or reason. When you focus on one side of a dichotomy you are ignoring the possible truths that exist on the other side that maybe you never considered. This is an idea from the twentieth century philosopher Jacques Derrida. The idea behind Derrida’s binary opposition is that, when humans define things by what they’re opposition is they ultimately place a higher value for one side of the binary than the other. By creating a binary, you are trapping ideas in a cage. You make it so that everything is either one way or the other, when in reality sometimes, it’s both or neither. So, by creating a political dichotomy we are allowing complicated issues to be oversimplified to the point where people may as well be picking their favorite color. Red or blue?
Drawing source: Adam Rahn
The state of politics in the U.S. is broken. In a democracy, it is the voice of the people who have the ultimate say on what direction the country will take. Fowler says “Obama said it’s up to us to change it, when only 1 in 5 of our young people vote. That has to change. I think our democracy is what we make it. Our founding fathers said, we have a constitutional government if we can keep it. So, In other words, we have to do the work to make our democracy work.” It is dependent on the people to change the state of our democracy. If you believe our system is corrupt, then vote for better change.
Recently there has been an increase of hidden money being given to political candidates. Willie Fowler mentions the Citizens United v. FEC decision, which made it so that the government allows corporations’ the right to fund political candidates under the protection of the First Amendment. This changed the way our politics work by allowing companies to hide money in political campaigns. Fowler says, “With 501c4 organizations being able to be created where by you can hide money in campaigns. I think that’s been bad news for our system, because huge sums of money go to candidates and people can hide behind the 501c4 label and not really ever come to light. I do think that, that is having an effect on our democracy.” This corrupt way of hiding money exists in both parties. So what do we do?
There are a few ways that we can fix our system. Money and greed breeds
corruption. So naturally how can we better handle money in politics and make sure the voices of the people are being heard? For those politically concerned citizens who want to have their voices heard, Fowler says “Stay engaged, stay engaged. Your vote matters. Make it count. Make them count your vote, because the people who are involved in the process are going to be the ones who have a voice in changing the process. If you truly believe that you wanna make a change, the way to make that change is by getting involved. It’s not too just withdrawal from the process, because then those who are still involved, their choice is going to reign supreme over yours.” The more people who participate, the healthier and fairer our democracy will be. As for the hidden money in politics “I think the cure for our system might be to have national funding. To actually fund the candidates and to force them to take a certain amount of money. You have a certain amount of money to spend on ads and that’s it. Obama raised over a billion dollars for his ads. Trump raised a considerable amount of money and then some people believe he had the outside help from Russia. So, I just think that if we had a certain amount of money given to the presidential candidates that they could use to run for office and then say no other outside money, I think that would cure it,” Fowler says. His idea on national funding is a very valuable solution to our problems with corruption. Not only would this support the interests of the people instead of the greedy few, but it also could help support independent candidates. The two-party system gets the popular vote, since they perpetually receive significantly more financial backing. This dichotomy is polarizing and dividing the American people. Having equal financial backing for more parties to speak on issues will help with greater diversity candidate options.
While there is a lot disenchantment in the political process, it’s good to remember that our system works a lot better than others. We are lucky to be born in a country that gives us the right to vote if we choose to. While our political process is corrupt, we still have the power to change how the process works. “I complain about our system, but in the end, I think our system is probably better than some of the other systems,” Fowler says. We have the power to change the world for the better. Your voice matters. Make them hear your voice.
Vote for a better future.