Do we Need a Third Political Party?

The Civil War is raging here in our country all over again.

Since the end of the Civil War, or as my grandmother called it, The War Between the States, there have been only 2 political parties here in the United States.

Affiliation with either of those 2 parties has never been so controversial and contentious as it is today. It is as if the Civil War is raging here in our country all over again.

We go to great lengths to build our collections of friends and followers on social media. We brag about how many people follow us or have friended us on these platforms.

And we say the most horrible things about and to those same people on Social media – all in the name of an ideology we didn’t create, nor do we fully support or, in most cases, understand.

Whether you identify as a liberal or a conservative, do you agree with 100% of what the politicians and special interest groups associated with your political party support? If you are honest with yourself and consider the question seriously, the answer will be No.

·         So why do we feel such outrage when someone disagrees with our ideology?

·         Why do we abandon all courtesy and manners and publish, in public, personal insults and result to name calling?

• ·         Why do we believe so strongly what we believe?
• ·         How much of what we believe is true is based in fact - and how much is based in blind faith?

Let’s find out how much you and I know about those things we feel so passionately about.

Welcome to the knowledge game. I call this section "Do you Believe Everything You are Told" – or as my father used to say: “If your buddy jumped off a cliff would you jump too?”

The rules are simple.

1. The 1^st rule is that you put your political ideology on pause and be willing to listen to a few facts about the issues of the day.
2. The 2^nd rule is that you remember that you and I are friends and friends never push their beliefs upon each other.
3. The 3^rd and final rule is that you think critically about the information I share with you today. That doesn’t mean you must agree. The point of the game is that you never blindly agree with anything you are told or that you read. Critical thinking means you consider the information and have an opinion on whether it is reasonable or not.

One thing I forgot to mention: As we discuss the information I am sharing with you, ask yourself how much of this you knew already, and why you are not familiar with other parts of the data.

Let’s talk about some of the current issues we all care about: 

COVID 19

We have been affected greatly by the Coronavirus. Schools are limited to a small percentage of in person attendance. Businesses have been shut down, many to never reopen. The way we work and live has changed – maybe forever.  Masks are required anytime we are around others in public. Politicians

say that we should wear masks even at home. We should wear the mask between bites at mealtime and sips when drinking. 6 feet of distance, we are told, is the appropriate distance to maintain from others while wearing a mask.

The federal government has also made itself the judge of which private businesses will live and which will die.

More than 800,000 mom and pop small businesses have closed, most to never reopen because they are deemed non-essential.

·         Why is Home Depot essential but Mom and Pop Lumber Yard not?  Why are large grocery chains deemed essential, but corner grocers are not?

·         Why has Amazon benefitted in the billions during this pandemic while the rest of us have suffered losses to our incomes, livelihoods, personal property, homes, credit ratings, and investments?

·         Who gave government the power to rule the most private parts of our lives and limit our freedom and liberty?

Most would answer: It is done for the health and safety of the people. 

Let’s examine that theory.

Everyone wears masks and everyone social distances, yet the virus is spreading more quickly than at any other time since it was discovered roughly a year ago.

I live on a golf course and I see lone golfers in the middle of the fairway wearing masks as they play. I see people alone in their cars driving from point a to point b with a mask on.

With the threat of fines by the government and the frequency of mask shaming by our neighbors, the participation rate of masks and social distancing is virtually 100% yet the virus continues to infect people at an alarming rate.

We are told that the rise of infections is due to contact with others outside or our immediate household gathering at home or during social get togethers which violate the 6 to 10 person maximum recommended by the authorities.

Are we to believe that those we live with at home or invite over for Thanksgiving dinner are not obeying the mask and social distancing policy? Because of their irresponsibility we are at risk? If our friends and loved ones are not the careless evildoers we are told they are and they are doing what the rest of us are doing, then how can they be a threat?

·         Could it be that masks and social distancing doesn’t work?

·         Is it remotely possible that we are following the advice of those who know nothing and are reacting irresponsibly upon bad information?

This is what we know from the data we have gathered from the CDC and derived from our experience:

In the US the average infection rate is 7%. The death rate is less than a 10^th of a percent.

By comparison, the common flu has an infection rate as high as 20% - if asymptomatic cases are combined with symptomatic cases. That is, those who show symptoms and those who do not. By the way, COVID numbers are always cited including both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.

Professional Basketball leads the way and is praised by the authorities for the measures they take to keep their players safe from the Coronavirus. Arenas are empty of fans, and masks and social distancing are strictly enforced. The players are not allowed to step outside of their hotels except to enter and leave the arena property. Every surface is sanitized at set times under strict guidelines.

Despite these precautions the NBA exceeds the national infection rate with nearly 9% of NBA players infected.

What if every deadly disease was handled as the Coronavirus is handled?

Did you know that 2,400 people die every day from heart disease? That is 876 thousand people per year. – Every year!

COVID 19 has killed less than half that number in a year.

·         Why aren’t all fast-food restaurants outlawed?

·         Why hasn’t the government banned all foods that contribute to heart disease?

·         Why aren’t Americans mandated to walk and work out every day under punishment of jail and fines?

·         Why aren’t drive-up heart testing sites set up in parking lots throughout our cities?

·         Is it because we have accepted that a particular disease will kill a known number of people each year?

·         Does the general public accept the death rate as tragic but normal?

·         Why is there no mass hysteria?

·         Why are there are no government mandates?

·         Would the American people even give this kind of power to the Federal Government?

All these things have been done by politicians and unelected officials in government about the Coronavirus. We not only go along with it, we grow angry and criticize those who question the measures taken.

Why are we so supportive of these limitations to our freedoms?

Liberal vs Conservative

I mentioned the modern War Between the States. There is a very real battle going on between Democrats and Republicans. Both parties are presented to the American people as critical to the country’s success. Both claim that the world will end if the other takes total control of government.

We Americans have more important things to worry about than what Washington does as it spends our tax money and how the 2 parties wage political war on each other.

We are in a time where politicians and the media are keenly interested in getting us involved with political issues they deem important. The best way to do that is to present an issue as having personal stakes in our lives. We all need to understand that the underlying motivation is money. There is big money in politics and career politicians build their professional lives around getting as much of it as they can while they hold office.

The battle for the American people has turned us upon one another. Most of what is used to move us to action is, at best, facts carefully crafted and presented to us to fit their narrative. More often we are lied to because special interest and ideologues know they can count on one thing above all. The largest number of Americans will not check the accuracy of what they are told, nor will they think beyond what they are convinced to believe. Our limited attention span and busy personal lives rarely allow for critical thinking.

Whether we identify as left or right, I believe we are more alike than we are different.

We can agree that:

• ·         No one wants to destroy the environment
• ·         We all want to eliminate the Coronavirus
• ·         We all want to avoid wars and the deaths of our young people in pointless foreign wars
• ·         We want success for us and our families
• ·         No one wants government in our bedrooms, living rooms, schools, and doctors’ offices

Is there anyone, democrat or republican, who agrees with 100% of the ideology of their chosen party or of any single politician?

So why are we willing to argue, fight and insult anyone who disagrees with us on the finer details?

Taxes

What American Citizen supports higher taxes?

When we work with our budgets at home: if we don’t have enough money to purchase a product we don’t buy that product. If we can’t maintain our standard of living on our current income we reduce our cost of living so our expenses fall within our means.

Can you believe that half of our economy is the federal government? 

The government produces no product, nor does it turn a profit. Government is a parasite that takes from all of us. 

What would be the downside of reducing the size and cost of government?

Should politics be a career?

Most politicians arrive in office a pauper and leave a king. I hear people say that’s just the way it is. In what other area of our lives would we tolerate a criminal enterprise, and resign ourselves to the resulting loss of our income and property?

The government doesn’t raise taxes to support the people of our country. Taxes are raised to feather the nest of greedy politicians and special interest.

When former President Trump cut capital gains and corporate taxes by 15%, we were told that the tax cuts benefitted only the rich.  Did you know that 9 out of 10 corporations are small to medium size businesses?  Did you know that everyone who has a 401k or receives an insurance settlement is subject to capital gains taxes?  Why were we told the lie about the rich benefitting?

·     Was it because the tax cut threatened the greed of politicians and special interest and the best way to control the opinions of a people who doesn’t check facts is to gin up hatred and envy?

Climate Change

When I was in school in the 70’s we were told that we were headed for an impending ice age because of fossil fuels and lax ecology. 

The North American Geological Survey had reported a 1/100^th of a degree drop in the average annual temperature of the planet since records were kept in the 40’s.

In the 80’s the science was reversed (how do you reverse science?) It was predicted that by the year 2000 the climate would be so overheated by man-made greenhouse gasses that the seas would rise and cover all of our coastal cities and inner lowlands.

Why was the term Global Warming scrapped and replaced by the more general term Climate Change?

Have you ever heard of East Anglia University in England?

East Anglia was considered the brain trust of the global warming movement until 2009. In 2009 the university’s servers were hacked and thousands of emails and internal documents were released to the public domain. Among the released information were thousands of internal emails that admitted that man made global warming was unproven and that the computer models used to predict climactic destruction were being manipulated to provide proof, and to keep the revenue for their research coming in.

After that bombshell, the environmental movement renamed the issue climate change because it covered the warming of the earth’s atmosphere and also the cooling of the atmosphere as reported by the North American Geological Survey.

·         No one wants the destruction of planet earth.

·         Why is looking critically at both sides of the scientific data considered climate change denial?

·         More accurately, why is the data being manipulated by a handful of scientists and interpreted by special interest groups to create a generation of climate change doomsayers?

TV weathermen and women don’t seem to know the difference between climate change and weather change. Because most Americans watch the big three TV networks, they believe what they are told by these climate change predicters who, like most of us, were indoctrinated by former global cooling then global warming idealogues.

Racism

There is a renewed movement determined to gin up the belief that our country is inherently racist. 

The most common argument focuses on the racism of law enforcement. Before the 2020 riots we heard about the shooting of unarmed black men and women. There were protests and calls for action. After the televised death of George Floyd, followed months of riots, looting, killings in the street (mostly black on black) and calls for defunding police.

According to the Department of Justice statistics police make around 10 million arrests per year. Of those 70% are white and 30% are black. Whites are arrested more than twice as often as blacks.

We are told that more unarmed blacks are killed than whites. According to the same DOJ numbers last year 25 unarmed whites were killed, and 14 unarmed blacks were killed.

A total of 1,000 people were shot and killed by police in 2019. Of those 39 were quote – unarmed - end quote. If you read the case files you find that most attacked the officers directly either with a non-firearm weapon or attacked the officer with fists.

·      Is there anyone who watched the George Floyd video – no matter their race – who thought – good he had it coming?  Does anyone you know of want the segregation of the 50’s and 60’s to come back in style? If not – why are the flames of racism being fanned?

3^rd Party

We need a third political party - of the people and by the people. 

We must ban together against a media and special interest push that would divide us and control us. Not a conservative or liberal party but a party that represents our interests and our needs without making politics a career and limits government to the minimum providing for the common defense and let the states run their own business as their citizens see fit. We are called the United States of America because states are sovereign. The federal government was created to unite those individuals, not to combine them.

·     Aren’t you weary of the greed and treachery of our elected officials?

·     Aren’t you tired of the career ruling class, as they see themselves, stealing our money for their personal gain?

·        Don’t we have better things to focus on than the fight for control of us and our lives?

·      Aren’t you tired of being lied to and manipulated to the point that we hate each other because of petty ideological differences we are told are critical to our very survival?

Me too. Thank you for playing.