Voting for the American Solidarity Party in the 2020’s
Like every other calamity this year, the American Election of 2020 has come and shows no sign of going away. Like in 2016, all of our newsfeeds will be filled to the brim with news stories and hot takes from the loser holding out hope that it isn’t over yet, or else pompous gloating from the winners about their inherent rightness and how satisfying it is to smugly watch their culture war enemies squirm in agony. (Remember kids, the system is unquestionable when you win, and a rigged piece of trash when you lose. Exhibit A: Trump wins in 2016, and the New York Times runs an article extolling the virtues of monarchy!)
While we will have to wait for the final results, the day of voting has passed. As such, we leave behind the days of panicked, screaming exhortation and enter upon the days of panicked, screaming, finger-pointing. Over the past year or more, we have been subjected to a non-stop deluge of calls to get behind a vanilla, bumbling, racist, creepy old man whose money and status has insulated him from the consequences of his idiocy for most of his life. We have also been called upon to vote for the same sort of man, but Orange. The future of the county was at stake, and if ever there was a time to toss aside our reservations and principles for the sake of survival, it was this election.
If you follow this blog or any of my social media pages, you will know that I am one of the few who did not listen to these secular altar calls. Instead, as in 2016, I supported the American Solidarity Party.
For those who do not know, the American Solidarity Party (hereafter referred to as the ASP) is a small political party devoted to the common good. With a platform based on Catholic Social Teaching, the ASP leaves behind the Left-Right dichotomy and puts forth the sensible notion that the size of the government doesn’t matter, as long as it serves the people, that the purpose of the economy is to create a stable environment to raise families and leave working citizens with sufficient quality of life, and that universal health care is a human right, and will drive down the number of abortions more than any law by itself. In short, the welfare of each individual citizen matters for more than any abstract idea of government size or “rights.”
When supporting ASP, one expects to receive all sorts of objections, usually centered on how hateful I am for trying to force my beliefs on people who don’t subscribe to them, as if that wasn’t the unspoken point of modern politics. (For the record, ASP is not a “Catholic Party;” our candidate this year was Brian Carrol, a former Evangelical Pastor.) Far more common this year, however, were responses from partisans of both major parties, claiming that I and those like me are ignoring the magnitude of the National Crisis, that we are throwing away our chance of influencing policy for the sake of unrealistic idealism, that we are fools for not joining the only candidate that can save us from THEM!!! At best, we are throwing our votes away. At worst, we are complicit in whatever disaster the winning candidate brings about.
I shall address these arguments in brief below.
First, the “Apocalypse Argument.” I’ve talked about this a while back, but in brief, the country is on the brink of unprecedented crisis, and if this election goes the wrong way, we will transform from a free republic into a tyrannical dictatorship, never to be free again. This argument is even brought out during midterm elections now. But the all-important question is never addressed: if our system of government is so fragile that a single election can destroy it, is it really worth preserving? Let’s be honest: which of us would keep a car that had a 50/50 chance of exploding whenever it was turned on? Only the most foolhardy would try to drive such a defective machine. The rest of us would try to get rid of it, even if doing so made us a “bad person” in the eyes of our neighbors (mostly the owner of the dealership that sold it to us). Quite simply, a car exists to transport us from place to place, and if it cannot do this without exploding, it is worthless. The same applies for a system of government. The whole point of having a republic is that the public has the ability to swap out their leaders in a free, fair election. But if elections have become so dangerous that merely having one will cause society to collapse overnight, what is the point of it? We shouldn’t just be looking for alternative political parties. We should be looking for an alternative form of government.
This, of course, assumes our political and media figures are honest patriots, and not pathological liars trying to win reelections and keep their ratings up. In that scenario, our republican system is at least serviceable, and in no imminent danger of collapse. I think this far more likely, due to the simple fact that these dire predictions have never come to pass. Bush did not turn America into an Evangelical Theocracy, Obama did not round up gun owners and put them in FEMA camps, and Trump, for all his many faults, has not done half of the evil things attributed to him. Now one could, I suppose, hold the position that the country really has been in danger of turning into a fascist dictatorship at every election cycle, but the American people, possessing greater infallibility than the Pope, have managed to make the right choice every single time. I reject this proposition for the simple fact that nobody seems to believe it, especially the losers in any given election. So, given that the pundits’ dire predictions have not come to pass, and that, election after election, the business of government continues on as usual regardless of who wins, I think our country can stomach some dissent from the two major parties.
This leads to the next argument: that voting third party would derail any political influence we might have had if we had if we had backed the Republicans or Democrats. I shall refer to this as the Saruman Argument, because it aligns so closely with the motives of Tolkien’s corrupted wizard. His proposition to the good wizard Gandalf is worth quoting:
"The Elder Days are gone.... The Younger Days are beginning. The time of the Elves is over, but our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see. '"And listen, Gandalf, my old friend...!" he said, coming near.... "I said we, for we it may be, if you will join with me. A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us.... There is no hope left in Elves or dying Númenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf.... Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those that aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means."
The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 2, Ch 2, The Council of Elrond
The Power that Saruman speaks of here is the Dark Lord Sauron, a satanic figure whose goal is to conquer the world and corrupt everything to his will, and he has the strength of arms, industry, and dark magic at his disposal to do just that. Similarly, the Republican and Democratic parties each possess colossal political machines, unbelievably wealthy benefactors, and the influence of the vast majority of media we consume. No other party even comes close. In such a situation, there are endless Saruman figures telling us to surrender our sovereign vote to either the Elephant or the Donkey, whatever our misgivings. Even if the party actively supports things we find abhorrent, or if the candidate a sleazy creep, the other party is out to destroy us, they insist, and in this time of National Crisis we have to make compromises with those who are at least willing to give us a seat at the table.
But Saruman never gains any influence with Saruman in Tolkien’s story. Instead Saruman becomes a miniature version of Sauron, breading armies of monsters, slaughtering innocent people, and wasting the land with industrial nightmares. The same thing happens in our world. Consider, for example, Fr. Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, a pro-life activist organization. Just days before the 2016 election, Fr. Pavone endorsed Trump by releasing a video of him placing a dead baby on a Catholic Altar. He has spent the last shilling for Trump at every opportunity. He is far from the only person corrupted by giving his allegiance to the Republican Party at the expense of everything else. Nor is this solely a Right-Wing problem: how many of us know liberals who are ready and willing to burn bridges with their own families over politics? The influence, it seems, only goes one way.
“But it won’t be like that!” the Sarumans say, “We’ll hold their feet to the fire.” How, exactly? By voting for the other party? The one you were convinced was so evil that it justified voting the way you did, however much you needed to hold your nose? Hardly. The Party, whichever party it is that has your vote, know that however much you may complain, chances are that you’ll make the same choice again next time, because they know you will put up with a whole lot of garbage if you think your survival is on the line.
Which leads us to the third argument. It claims that due to the nature of the National Crisis (notice a pattern?), we are in a fight for our very way of life, even our very lives. In such circumstances, we have to support whoever is willing to protect us (or at least pretends to protect us), whatever our feelings are. Now, there is no shame in trading obedience for survival: pretty much every person on the planet is alive today because their ancestors had to make the same choice at some point, sometimes for generations at a time. But if this is indeed the situation we are now in, we are no longer free citizens.
We are serfs.
This is the Feudal Argument. Whether it’s a barbarian tribe, the mob, or a political party, the result is the same: if our survival depends on giving powerful people what they want out of us, we are no longer free.
We may very well be at that point as a society, but I’m not convinced we are there just yet. But we certainly will be, sooner or later, if we continue to think and function in terms of this binary political paradigm. The only hope of getting out of this situation is to break free of the Elephant and Donkey mythologies and support alternative parties. I have chosen to back the American Solidarity Party, not only because it aligns with my beliefs, but because, unlike the Libertarian and Green parties, for example, it has the most potential for mass appeal: I know of no one who would not want to live in a nation where people are more important than the bottom line, where going bankrupt to pay for medical treatment is unheard of, and that no one feels that abortion is their only option.
There remain only two further arguments. Like the others, they are the same argument, made with varying levels of despair. The first is that, by not supporting either one of the major parties, I am somehow morally culpable for what happens after the election. This is nonsense. I have no control or influence over Trump or Biden, and certainly none over the vast amounts of people who voted for them. Whatever they do, they do without my consent. Therefore, since I do not consent to their actions and did everything reasonably in my power to stop them, how can I be culpable?
Lastly, there is the most hopeless argument of all: that there is no hope of dislodging either party, so why bother? I bother because I am thinking about my country’s future past the next election cycle.
To quote Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings:
“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 9, The Last Debate
As I said, these arguments against voting third party are all arguments from despair. For a country founded by an unlikely revolution, we sure seem to be convinced that the status quo is unchangeable. But we need not look so far back in our history: consider the United Sates of America circa 1950 to the United States of America circa 2020. For good or ill, our nation (and the world) is a very different place than it was 70 years ago. None of these major changes, whether racial justice, or attitudes towards homosexuality, happened overnight, or as the result of one election cycle. Each was the result of slow, steady, persistent efforts from ideological minorities who refused to give up. I believe such efforts can change this country yet again, if we only have the guts to try.
You who are without hope are welcome to remain on the carousel of confusion our politicians and pundits have put us on. But if you are not ready for serfdom and sick to your stomach of insanity, please join me in trying to stop this ride.
If you like what I write here, be sure to check out my novel, Cain Son of Adam: A Gothic Tragedy, available in paperback and eBook formats on Amazon, and free to read on Kindle Unlimited.