Hello! Hello! Hello! Welcome to episode 34, season two of We Don’t Talk About P-word!
As season two speeds up, I want to give you a preview of what to expect. This season, we are going to get a little more into the details of government.  We will be examining “What is ‘specifically’ the matter with our government?” Not only that, but I am also going to do something most political talking heads won’t. I’m going to propose some solutions to these problems, but I will always strive to make them easy to understand.
As I have stressed in the past, these aren’t the only answers. I’m not claiming them to be the ‘perfect’ solution, whatever that means. But they are solutions that the corporate and political elites won’t even consider. 
Why? Because the solutions would be detrimental to their goals. By now, we should all know why the corporate elites keep politicians on the payroll. They do it to protect the Corporate Political Agenda. I know I sound like a broken record with this, but the parties do not work for the People. They work for the wealthy elites who keep them in power. 
If none of this sounds familiar to you, check out season one. I have laid out why we must be wary of the parties and the corrupting influence of money in our politics.
A lot of what I will talk about today will be concepts and hypotheses. We will be discussing the cancers that have infested our political system. Some of these issues will be further explored in individual episodes. Today, we won’t talk much about solutions but more about a broad theme that plagues our nation.
I guess you could say today’s theme will be ‘balance’. We will not cover how to achieve it, necessarily… at least, not yet. Today, we are going to discuss its importance and where it is missing.
It is important to point out that true balance is impossible. Nothing controlled by humans can achieve pure balance. (If you are a Rick and Morty fan, you’ll know it would drive us mad anyway.) But the closer we can get, the better it is for the People. In fact, a nation based on Justice must perpetually seek balance. The goal of Justice must always be ‘balance.’ That is the reason that Lady Justice is depicted holding a scale.
Our nation should be so focused on balance that it is constantly updating laws to achieve it. Democracy only exists for as long as balance is being pursued. Once we let either side of the scale grow too heavy, democracy is lost. The pursuit of Happiness and the pursuit of Justice go hand in hand. 
Our Founders knew this. They knew that to achieve justice, they must find balance. They knew from experience that a single leader or king wasn’t the answer. The Articles of Confederation proved a single legislature wasn't the answer. 
James Madison came up with a solution. It was part of his Virginia Plan written before the Constitutional Convention. Unfortunately, in the end, this solution was applied to one aspect of our government but not to others.
So, when balance is elusive, how do we achieve justice? 
We create a system that constantly endeavors to achieve balance, even if we may never reach it. That is exactly what they did with the Constitution. Or more accurately, that was their intention with the Constitution. 
That was the purpose of our system of checks and balances. There are three branches, each always watching, always checking the other two. All three jealously guard their own power. Each governs, wary of the power of the other two.
The Executive doesn’t like a law passed by the legislature? Veto it.
The Legislature finds the President pursuing criminal enterprise? Impeach them. 
The Judicial finds a law passed and signed by the other two unconstitutional? Declare it so. 
Each checks the other two. Each balances the government so no one branch may seize power.
But this balance only works if we strive for balance in all aspects of government. Unfortunately, the Founders didn’t prepare the government for parties. 
You might be saying, “But we have two parties. That’s the epitome of balance.” If so, then you haven’t been paying attention for the last 200-plus years. 
Balance isn’t about an even number of opposing forces. Achieving balance requires much, much more. Howard Fineman wrote about this in his book The Thirteen American Arguments. 
"We have been blessed with history's best chance to live in the space created by equipoise among the brute forces that forever vie for domination over mankind in society."
Society is in a constant battle for balance. This war rages between five combatants, while the People are stuck in the middle. 
Fineman tells us the combatants are government, church, market, tribe, and academy. Government, church, and the market are each self-explanatory. Tribe consists of things like your political party, family, and where you live. It is things that affect a specific group and not the whole. Academy includes science, education, and knowledge. 
Each of these seeks to subjugate the People to their will. Each hope to stamp out or control the other four.
History has shown us that government should never reign supreme. Most Americans accept this without question. The other four are a bit more controversial. The First Amendment attempted to curb the intrusion of religion into government. But still too often, many try to insert it where it doesn’t belong. The market tries to convince us that their prosperity is ours. They profit from our hard work and then tell us we're lucky they gave us a job. The fact is they need us more than we need them. Our tribal nature leads to partisanship and pointless culture wars. These are emotions meant to distract, not to govern. Science is a bit more complicated.
The goal of science is to improve society and our understanding of the universe around us. Without it, we would not survive; we would not advance. The problem comes when these improvements are not popular or impossible to enact at the time. Science doesn’t care about politics. Science doesn’t care about finances. Science is simply the truth despite those handicaps.
Sure, over time our understanding may change, with new knowledge and technology. But at any given time, science provides the most accurate truth based on the knowledge we have access to. 
The problem with science is that it can be condescending. No, not the knowledge itself, but many of the people espousing it. It doesn't care about your opinion. It doesn’t care who loses a job. It doesn't care how much it costs. Science is indifferent to the path it takes to get there; it just expects the destination to be reached. 
I have a friend I met in graduate school. They are one of the most intelligent people I know and see things from a different perspective than most. They can often see the “most efficient” way to achieve a goal. Unfortunately, they do not always look at the environment surrounding the problem. They believe that because it is the right and most efficient way, we need to immediately switch to it. But that’s not the way life works. 
My friend wants to ignore politics and opinions. They do not want to work within the confines of our system and society. They want to bypass the will of the People to “make society better.” 
In many discussions, I have said to them, “I am not saying what you are proposing isn't a good idea. But how do you achieve your goal today? You can’t enact laws and regulations with the system that you want. You must find a way to achieve your goals through the system that exists.” 
Science makes the same oversight. Its goal is greater understanding and societal improvement; it is not compliance. That is why balancing science is important. We can’t ignore science, like climate change, because if we do, we will end up destroying ourselves. But because of tribalism, and its own desire for dominance, we are required to work through our system. 
To govern, you must find balance.
To strive for balance, we created parties to represent these opposing factions. Unfortunately, these parties became more concerned with championing tribalism than balancing factions. They no longer seek balance. They seek to exploit religion. They seek to discredit science. They seek to control the state through tribalism at the behest of the market.
So, if faction is the enemy, how do we get rid of it? Should we want to?
In The Federalist Papers #10, Madison wrote: 
“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty… the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinion.”
Destroying liberty is contradictory to the American way of life. That only leaves the second. But until we are a nation of clones or robots, that isn’t workable either. As Madison said in the same writing, “Faction is sown in the nature of man.”
Madison concluded that since we cannot remove the causes, we must seek to control its effects. His answer to that was “The more factions, the better.” 
Does that mean we need a floodgate of new political parties to even the playing field? Well, no. That wouldn’t work. For far too long, we have utilized a winner-take-all system in political elections. It will take some time to remove that bias from the collective consciousness. Remember, we must work within the system we have, not the system we would like (or that should be).
I have talked in the past about being a gamer. My favorite types of games are live service games. To be more specific, I am referring to MMORPGs (Google it). Over the years, I have sunk more hours into these types of games than I care to admit. But in that time, there is only one that stands out. Sure, I still remember my first, and of course, I enjoy the ones I play now. But there has only been one that continues to give me that feeling of nostalgia. There has been only one that I hope every new game I play lives up to. 
That game is Dark Age of Camelot created by the now-defunct Mythic Entertainment. It is still running to this day, but having been released in 2001, it is very dated. But I digress…
Why am I talking to you about an online video game that is over twenty years old? I’m getting there, I promise. 
I am not naïve. I realize that much of my nostalgia comes from rose-colored glasses. As much as I loved the game at the time, I doubt it would feel anywhere near the same today. But there is one aspect of it that holds a valuable lesson for our politics. 
One aspect of online games that I dislike is PvP, which stands for player versus player. This is where players fight, one digital character versus another, in a free-for-all. 
I have always been much more interested in cooperative games, even in my youth. Growing up and to this day, my siblings and I favor board games that require cooperation. PvP usually holds little interest to me, and so it is an aspect that I don’t get involved in most games. 
Dark Age of Camelot was different. Other than the first Overwatch, which wasn’t an MMORPG, it is the only game I have ever enjoyed PvP. The reason was that it was RvR instead of PvP. Instead of individual players facing off, it was realm versus realm (or nation vs. nation). This meant factions fought each other over shared goals, instead of individual players. It was cooperative PvP. Instead of a free-for-all, you had a team backing you up and you fought for your “country”. 
Other games have done realm versus realm-type PvP, but in my opinion, no one has done it as well. What made them different? There were three different realms, where most have two. The game included three distinct “nations” to join. One was steeped in Irish Folklore, one in Norse, and one around the King Arthur myths.
One of the best parts of this game is that it created “realm unity”. You fought for your faction. You protected your “countrymen.” You achieved goals and rewards as a realm. 
All are great lessons to learn, but what set it apart was that no one side could dominate for long. In most PvP games, one side will be more popular. With only two sides, they dominate the game world they play in. This can last for a long time, if not the entire life of the game. 
The benefit to three realms is that when one side got too powerful the other two could team up against them. Throughout my time in that game, the tides shifted many times. Sometimes, we were the windshield, and sometimes, we were the bug. But it was always fun, and it kept things interesting because you knew it wasn’t a lost cause.
The Founders understood this benefit when they created three branches of government. With two, one can become too powerful and dominate. With three, if one gets out of line, the other two can put them back in their place. At least, that is how they were designed to work. 
Sadly, the one thing they didn’t plan for was faction. Unfortunately, they addressed factions like they did slavery, which means not at all. They all saw the reckoning coming, but no one wanted to upset the status quo. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The more things change, the more they stay the same. 
Even a government with three branches can be dominated. It is all too easy when there are only two factions controlling that government. That’s where we are, today. 
Dark Age of Camelot is still running, but it is a shadow of what it once was. Many changes later, the idea of realm unity disappeared. Technology and time advanced, leaving the game removed from relevance. It’s the story of most things. 
If we aren’t careful, it’s the story of the United States of America. 
So, what am I saying? Is the answer to our political woes a third major party? 
No, that is not what I am saying. It may have been the answer in 1789, but not today. It may even help in the future, but not today. We have let things go too far. Parties have defined themselves as self-serving entities. Another self-serving party would get us nowhere. The answer is more independent candidates running for office across the nation. We must create reliable avenues for independents to access the ballot. 
The winner-take-all system is not prescribed by the Constitution. It comes from each state’s individual election laws. This stems from the way we elect our presidents. That process is enshrined in the Constitution. When electors choose the President, they choose two candidates. At least one of those candidates must not be from the state the elector represents. After all votes are tallied, the one that earns half plus one of the electors is the President. 
Over the years, especially in the early years, different election methods were tried. Most states settled on a winner-take-all system. There are still two states that use the congressional district method. These states are Maine and Nebraska. In both states, the popular vote winner is awarded two electoral votes. But the winner of each district may also earn an elector. 
This is contrary to most states which award all electors to the winner of the popular vote in that state. This occurs whether they won by 99% of the vote, or 34% in a three-way election. That would mean 66% of those living in that state preferred another candidate.
If you consider this objectively, you will see the problem. Awarding all electors to a winner of only 34% of the vote isn’t very representative. 
That isn’t balance. 
That’s giving too much power to the parties. That makes candidates focus their efforts on only a handful of states. It's another way for the elites to remove the People from our government. 
States must offer reliable methods for independents to run for office. There are alternatives to achieve better balance. The district method, rank choice voting, and jungle primaries to name a few.
You might say, “But that will cause contingent elections.” It might, but contingent elections shouldn’t scare us. They would tell us more about our leaders than years of service in Congress. A lot has changed since our last contingent election in 1824. We would know every little deliberation, every backroom deal, every Representative’s intention. All would be leaked, reported on in the media, or highlighted across social media. Their motives could not be hidden.
We must stop letting Congress govern (or not govern) quietly. We must make them state who they are and what they believe. There must be consequences for their service, whether they are good or bad. We must force them to make mistakes to show their true colors. How else do we know who to re-elect and who to replace?
We let Congress hide behind the excuse of politics for why nothing gets done. We must take away that crutch. For good or ill, Congress must do their job. Then, we must punish or reward them for doing that job. Too often in politics, we hand out participation trophies. We re-elect them after they do nothing for us.
Maybe you’re thinking that independents will be a small group and they will have no influence. That is the beauty of true representative democracy. First, if given greater opportunities, more independents would run for office. Sure, they may not win often. They might not even become strong enough to ever be the majority. That is not the point. The point is to create balance. A third voice creates a pivot. A third choice demands compromise.
Without a third choice, the parties only have to make their base happy.
Let’s go back to Lady Justice, depicted blindfolded with scale in hand. She is prepared to deal swift justice as she clenches her sword. Sometimes the scales are balanced, sometimes not, but the message is clear. When we look at that visage, we always notice three aspects. We see the balance of the scales, we notice the blindfold, and the sword is hard to ignore. 
Too often, when we look at scales, we only see the platters. We ignore everything else. We never pay attention to the most important aspect. We never see the fulcrum, the bar that holds the platters up. The fulcrum is the least glamorous part of the scale, but it is absolutely the most important. Without the fulcrum, there can be no balance. 
That’s the independent representative. They are the fulcrum of our political system. They are what connects the People to the parties. They are the third voice when the parties forget for whom they work. They hold the two parties accountable, keeping one from gaining too much power. They are essential to balance. 
We have erected too many roadblocks in front of independent candidates. We must strive for balance. To do that, we must push for easier ballot access for independent candidates. More independent representation in government only makes the parties better.
Independents are the true voice of the People. They speak when the parties ignore us. Independents force the parties to rethink their actions and platforms. If they do not, they risk the independents creating parties to replace them.
Today, we talked about the concept of balance. As this season continues, we will come back to the theme of balance time and time again. We will discuss solutions and unfortunately more problems. I will continue to show you where We the People can make a difference. We the People can remind the parties whom they serve. We the People can reset American politics. We can do this for the betterment of all Americans, today and tomorrow. 
Because We the People are the Power!