- Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: Our Fake Two-Party System - Stephen H. Unger, Professor, Emeritus, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Columbia University
The Premise:
The key feature is an electoral system based on two political parties, the Soft Party and the Hard Party. The Soft Party plays the role of "people's advocate", mouthing rhetoric suggesting that it is really for ordinary people, as opposed to the wealthy people (WP). The Hard Party is designed to be more harsh than the Soft Party with respect to style and the measures it advocates. It is more openly supportive of the WP. However, both parties are largely financed by WP, tho not necessarily to the same extent by the same individuals. Their basic principles are the same: to maintain and enhance the power of the WP. Having two parties gives different WP opportunities to debate minor differences in tactics, and gives more of them chances to gain public attention.
... clever tactics used by the [wealthy people] to maintain their control involve dividing potential opposition. For example, private sector unions are pitted against public sector unions
Thus, we have a stable situation in which the WP, a very small minority, are able to maintain their dominance over a large population with minimal use of force and in a society that appears to be quite free and democratic.
The drift toward loss of liberty, unending wars, environmental degradation, growing economic inequality can't be stopped easily, but it will never be halted as long as we allow corporate interests to rule our country by means of a pseudo-democracy based on the two-party swindle.
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