Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils

Imagine a massive political movement intelligent enough to recognize that throwing out a corrupt incumbent and replacing it with the corrupt opposition is no longer an acceptable choice.

Imagine it refusing to organize around one leader. Instead, it organizes around three principles: radical transparency, anti-corruption and anti-monopoly.

The purpose is not simply to reject the two parties. It is to release the natural American instinct for freedom and independence, and our fidelity to justice for all, from a political system that has narrowed our choices.

That type of political outcome is not a fantasy. On Sunday, Serbia’s student-backed movement defeated not only the incumbent political camp but also the established opposition.

It built its own electoral agenda and won with a program built on the principles of anti-corruption and anti-monopoly. The new government still has to prove it can govern. But Serbian voters showed they were not limited to choosing between the leadership that had failed them and the corrupt opposition hoping to replace it.

The American people are told that choice is unavoidable. A week from today, they will vote in an election that will likely give Democrats control of part or all of Congress.

Many people will simply vote against the Republicans. Who can blame them? The modern Republican Party has shown us who it is over the last two years, just as the modern Democratic Party showed us who it was in the first two years of the Obama administration.

Neither has given the public reason to believe it will do anything more than vilify its opponent while enriching itself and serving its powerful allies.

So ask what a Democratic majority will do. Will it really lower health care costs, or will it preserve high-priced private insurance monopolies, then subsidize them with our tax dollars and tell us they are giving us health care?

Will they make education focus on real learning? Will they institute policies that build housing at a rate that makes it truly affordable? Will they break up the monopolies, reform campaign finance, end gerrymandering or impose term limits?

Or will they grandstand and investigate Republicans, blame them for what is broken, and use that anger to strengthen their own power for the benefit of their corporate sponsors?

The stakes have never been higher. A technology as consequential as the invention of electricity has arrived in the form of artificial intelligence. It could launch the greatest wave of prosperity the world has ever seen.

If the two parties that protect concentrated wealth remain in control, AI could instead produce the greatest consolidation of power the world has ever seen.

Critics will say the established parties know how to operate government. They do. They also know how to use its levers to protect themselves and their allies. Building a new coalition carries the risk of learning how to govern. Keeping the old parties in charge carries the known cost of a system that keeps working at our expense.

America has two years, beginning next Tuesday, to organize a movement around radical transparency, anti-corruption and anti-monopoly as the gateway to prosperity.

Two years is not much time, but it is enough time to begin.