The host, Grumpy Gus, discusses the evolution of the government system from the intended representation of the people to one dominated by the two-party system. He explains how political parties have gained excessive power, influencing candidate selection and voters' decisions. The original purpose of the government's branches as a representation of the people has been compromised, leading to a shift in power from the people to the parties. Gus highlights how political and commercial benefits offered by parties impact candidate choices and elections, ultimately subverting the system envisioned by the founding fathers. Hello there, and welcome to the Weekly Grizzle. I am your host of this weekly podcast, Grumpy Gus. I decided to start this podcast as a way of exploring topics of thought that interest me. Each episode I will pick a different topic and give you the grizzle as I see it. Before I jump into this week's topic, I want to give a bit of a background on who I am. First and foremost, I am a grizzler, which is a fancy way of saying I bitch about things. Much to the annoyance and amusement of those around me. I am very opinionated and have a strong sense of what I like and dislike, and I am not afraid to point it out. I often find myself thinking about topics from politics to video games to essentially whatever crosses my mind. I love to explore topics that interest me and I seek to understand them as fully as I can, which often leads me down rabbit holes of research on strange things. I abhor being wronged and misinformed, and I enjoy arguing. I probably weigh a little too much if my friends are to be believed. The grizzle is still out on that, but they are probably right. Now that you know a bit more about me, I would like to jump into today's topic. Fair warning, it is a political one, but it isn't a right vs. left sort of topic. I take no sides politically within this argument and seek to speak on the topic itself as a whole. That being said, political bias exists in everyone. It is an inescapable part of being human, and thus some of what I say will inevitably have a tinge of bias, but I shall endeavor to point it out if I notice it, and will do my best to keep it to a minimum. The topic of today's discussion is on how the three branches of government no longer function as a representation of the people, but rather as a representation of the two-party system. We will explore from my view the difference in how I believe the system was intended to run vs. how the system operates today. The purpose of the voting system set in place by our founding fathers was to give we the people a means to have representation in government. Even in the times of these wise individuals, the population of the United States was large enough that if we gave an individual voice to the concerns of every citizen, on every topic of government, at every level, it would take years to decide policy, let alone what to order for lunch. With this in mind, a system was crafted to allow for the people to choose representatives based on state in the Senate and population of the state in the House of Representatives. This system created a means of accountability that in theory would make these officials live in fear of the displeasure of those they serve, the people. The Senators and Representatives were designed to represent and serve at the will of the people. If the people were displeased by their performance in representation, or lack thereof, they could be removed at the next election cycle. This power of choice served to make these lawmakers beholden to the people they represent. It served as a check against any particular person or faction choosing their goals above that of the people. Today this system has been subverted. Instead of representing the will of the collective peoples, their constituents, many of these officials align first with an ideology made manifest and given power. These are called political parties, recognized as the two-party system. Political parties were never meant to be a permanent, formalized system within our government. In fact, many of the Founding Fathers warned against these systems. James Madison, in his Federalist Papers No. 10, described factions, their term for political parties, as a disease and a source of turbulence, oppression, and corruption, which flew directly in the face of the intention of the Constitution, in his opinion. George Washington warned explicitly against the baneful effects of the spirit of the party in his Farewell Address. Parties formed in the early days of our nation due to fundamental disagreements between the national leaders on issues of governance. They formed initially to make it easier to advance specific visions for the new nation, the Federalists, the party of Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republicans, the party of Thomas Jefferson. Federalists wanted a strong central government with a commercial and industrial economy, based on trade and the goal of becoming a world power, while Democratic-Republicans favored a smaller federal government with most issues being decided on a state-by-state basis and a strong agrarian society, which meant a society championed by independent estate-holding farmers who would be self-sufficient in cultivating their lands and properties and communities. Two fundamentally opposing party views that in today's society can be boiled down into big government with the power to distribute goods and services based on the idea of the needs of the people as a whole, as interpreted by the few, versus small government with the distribution of goods and services based on the idea that individual communities are better situated to decide what the community needs rather than a loftier, more detached body of governance. We know these parties as the Democrat Party and the Republican Party. Today people often use these parties to decide which candidates align with their viewpoints and would choose those candidates in many cases based on that distinction alone. While this is of course the choice of the individual voter, such a system of choice is very easily manipulated. When one cares more for the purported party alignment of a candidate instead of the candidate directly, it shifts who the candidate is thus beholden to. What I mean by this is, as we covered before, each elected government official is to be beholden to the people they represent. For instance, the representative of Kentucky is beholden to the constituents within the district that elected them, and the senator from California is beholden to the constituents of the state at large. Now imagine for a minute that instead of needing the support of the people based on the decisions they make as individual representatives, they instead require the endorsement of a secondary entity which allows them to use an identifying marker which will all but guarantee a large portion of their constituents will vote for them regardless of their personal views and actions. This would shift the center to which they are beholden from the people to the secondary entity, thus subverting the system that was originally intended by the founding fathers. This system shifts the center of power from the people to the party. So what, you may ask? These are just monitors, identifying factors. They don't have any real governmental power. You would be correct. The individual parties do not have any enshrined governmental office or power, but they have evolved to the point that they have political and commercial power, which is a very important distinction. Having political and commercial power allows these secondary entities, which we will call committees, to offer benefits to those who choose to align with them. Money and endorsement are the two key factors which committees apply masterfully in order to entice candidates to join them. Voters often donate to these committees and PACs, which are a complex issue for another time, rather than to the individual candidates. This means that if you want the money, you must be chosen by the committee to be the possible representative of your constituents. This money will buy you ad space, structural campaign support, and many other enticing and often necessary benefits which are available in a much lesser capacity to unaligned or non-chosen representatives, often to the point of crippling their chances of winning. As for endorsement, since people often choose based on party, those who have served within the party and having a favorable view amongst the voters will publicly endorse the candidate, as well as celebrities and people of note, which increase the chance dramatically of those who receive these endorsements. In terms of political power, these parties are not officially enshrined within our Constitution by design. There is no Democrat or Republican party or mention of any party in that regard. Yet, somehow, instead of hundreds of parties, we have two, hence the two-party system as it is often called. Yes, we technically have the Libertarian Party and the Green Party and several others, but they are mostly impotent and still fall under the same governing issues of the other parties as a whole. We call it the two-party system for a reason. First, not because you have to belong to one of the two officially to be elected, but in general, a candidate must align with one politically. Their political power is so great that an entire unofficial system, separate from that which is enshrined in the Constitution, is viewed by most as inextricable and treated by many as official. These committees have enough power within their own system that they decide which candidates run for the office of president, as well as those who run for the individual representative and senator positions, to some degree. Technically, there are systems within each where those who choose to align with the party can vote for which candidates ultimately get the party endorsement, but since these are not official entities controlled by the Constitution, they are free to change their rules or even ignore them with little to no consequence, as we have seen as recently as 2024, with the Democrat National Committee choosing Kamala Harris without what is known as a primary, the aforementioned selection process in which candidates are presented to the voting citizens who align with that party. The system of choosing your party, which as we stated has no basis of law behind it, found its way into the voting registration process in many states. This information is available to the committees as yet another resource to offer potential candidates. In short, these unofficial committees have become the true center for power to which candidates offer allegiance and serve at the pleasure of, rather than the individuals they represent. One could argue that the individual constituents still have the power, if an official does something they do not like, to vote them out of office. This is true to an extent, but not as much as was intended by the Founding Fathers. This is likely to be the point, dear listener, where political bias breaks through if it does at all, but I shall do my best to avoid it as much as I can. Earlier I said many people will vote for a candidate based on party rather than their individual beliefs. That is an important tool used by these political parties to maintain control. These parties have leadership structures much as any organization will have. For this example, we will use a feudal society hierarchy to represent a point, and I hope you will stick with me through the metaphor. Much like the kingdoms of old, there are the noble class, the merchant-slash-trade class, and the peasant class. This is an oversimplification of the feudal system for the metaphor, but since we are not doing a deep dive into the feudal system itself, the simplification will suffice. Perhaps in a future episode I may dive into the very topic of that form of government, which I find very interesting, but not today. The noble class, in this case, are the political party members who have held office for decades. Those such as Chuck Grassley, 50 years, Ed Markey, 48 years, Chuck Schumer, 44 years, Hal Rogers, 44 years, Mitch McConnell, 40 years, and Nancy Pelosi, 38 years. These individuals are often party leaders. For example, Pelosi, Schumer, McConnell, and Grassley. Their leadership tends to dictate the policy decisions and direction that the two parties move in. The merchant and trade classes are those who are under them, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Hakeem Jeffries, John Kennedy, John Thune, Dick Durbin, Ritz Scott, Tom Cotton, and so forth. I chose a list of senators as an example for brevity, not for any particular point. These may also be leaders who hold leadership positions, but they still serve at the direction of the noble class. The peasant class are the voters themselves within this system, those that vote for party over person. Yes, you have freeholders if you want to torture the metaphor, those that vote for people based on their individual choice rather than the ones dictated by the party, but by and large, they are fewer. This system creates centers of power where people like Schumer, McConnell, Grassley, and Pelosi can essentially make the party desires more important than that of the people. This is done because their particular areas of representation are so heavily skewed in their party favor that they will almost never face any challenge to their rulership by using the previously mentioned political and commercial powers of their parties. These individuals are royalty in all but title, enthroned in their seats directing the will of those who serve under them and serve at their pleasure. They must if they wish to hold their seats. Since they control these unofficial committees, anyone seeking to challenge them would have to have gained power within those committees sufficient to challenge them, which as we've seen from a historical standpoint, is not the usual outcome. Often we will hear political slogans such as blue no matter who, or red or dead, or the sketchily sourced quote about how people would vote for anyone with a D next to their name often attributed to Lyndon B. Johnson. These statements are representative of the mindset used by these political parties to shift the center of power to one they control, something James Madison warned against. So we find the legislative branch compromised, with elected officials aligning to party over the people, there is a system of checks and balances which should stop corruption from going too far, correct? Well there is a system of checks and balances, but it doesn't quite work the way I believe it was intended. The system of checks and balances was intended to check the power of any one branch by the powers of the other two. We have the executive branch which consists of the cabinet and offices of the president and vice president. The legislative branch, which we have covered extensively so far, and the judicial branch, which to oversimplify, consists of the courts and judges, including the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country. In theory the powers of one should never outweigh the powers of the others, and there should always be recourse over the others to deal with any possible corruption of their fellow branches. In practice the executive branch suffers from the same feudal hierarchy as the legislative, and the judicial branch is staffed by the decisions of the legislative and executive branches. Let's do a quick breakdown of the executive branch to show just how it fares when compared to the challenges faced by the legislative. The office of the president is the highest executive office in the country. This office selects their cabinet members to head the various functions of government approved by legislative vote. The office also holds the power of commander-in-chief of the United States military, which holds wide discretion over the deployment and disposition of our armed forces. This is held in check, at least nominally, by the legislative branch, which must approve of any declarations of war. But as we have seen for the past several decades of presidents, these rules are often skirted, as recently seen by the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, where President Maduro was arrested and extradited on a warrant for arrest issued by Joe Biden, and carried out under Donald Trump. I'm not going to get into the politics of that entire situation, it is neither here nor there, and is a can of political worms, thus unlikely to be the subject of a future episode. My reason for referencing it was to point out that the system of checks and balances can very easily be interpreted widely or narrowly depending on the legislative and executive branches and whether the parties that hold majority at the time agree or disagree with the executive interpretation of those powers, and beyond that, a small portion of what it reaches the judicial branch, but we will get into that in a little bit. This branch is even more directly beholden to the party-politics center of power because the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee, which are, as we established, unofficial centers of power, control which candidate ultimately gets to run for president and vice president in the major election. Since there are a smaller amount of positions available in this election, the candidates are encouraged, if we want to be generous, even more by the political and commercial strength of these committees to walk in line with their goals. As for the judicial branch, the appointment of judges at the federal level are decided through a two-step process. The president puts forth a candidate, and the Senate must then vote on admittance to the position after a judiciary hearing, a fancy way of saying interview, of the candidate. So for those who are still following, two potentially compromised bodies who are heavily incentivized to put party over people are in charge of who is put into the position that has the power to curb their own power. The legislative branch also has the power to remove a judge through impeachment using the House of Representatives, which means these judges, which are beholden to political parties for their position, are also beholden to them to keep that position. This is even more dangerous when it comes to the Supreme Court, which consists of nine members who are in theory impartial and unaligned to a political party, but in reality often openly tout their political beliefs when they make their decisions on the viability of laws when compared to the Constitution, rather than an objective weighing that the position calls for. Now that we've established the problem with the system, and how it has changed, I want to talk about ways that I see to fix the problem. Unfortunately, most if not all of these will never see their day on the hill, because it would require the aforementioned bodies to institute laws that curb their own power, but it still merits discussion. The first step in disrupting these centers of power and shifting them back to the people would be to remove the RNC and DNC from existence as entities, or conversely, enshrine them into the process in an official way that gives the people recourse to hold them accountable legally when they change or flat-out ignore their established rules. Personally, I would prefer the removal of these committees due to the fact that I cannot trust that the laws would not be made in such a way as to officially enshrine their existing powers rather than limit them, but I want to approach these issues with multiple solutions that align more with the original political parties, centralized government, or agrarian power, rather than present a my-way or the highway argument. The next step, I would suggest, would be to impose term limits for members of Congress. Currently, Senators and Representatives can serve what essentially become lifetime appointments if their constituent base is large enough and deep enough into their party alignment to make their next appointment entirely based on the letter next to their name. By ensuring a regular flow of people in and out of these positions, we make it much harder for power bases and allegiances to form and calcify. Those two steps would greatly curb the political power of the individual parties. Next, we will talk about how to limit their commercial power. Money is power, as the old adage goes, and more often than not, the candidate with the larger war chest of money is the one who prevails. This is not a hard rule, but it's happened enough to be a pattern of note. Capping the amount of money each candidate can spend at every level with strict auditing, whose results are available to public scrutiny, would do a lot to lessen the commercial power of these parties. Removing the ability for political parties and candidates to accept donations and simply assigning a set and equal amount of money to each candidate would ensure an even playing field where the candidate's own ability to promote themselves will be the driving factor behind their ascension to these positions. I'm sure there are hundreds of ways to corrupt even these solutions to all but ensure the outcome of elections, and no system is perfect, but in my less than humble opinion, these solutions would go a long way to push the center of power back to the people as was intended. With that, I will end this episode. Thank you to everyone who gave us a listen and everyone who made it this far into my ranting. I hope you enjoyed yourself and I look forward to seeing you next time. This has been your host, Grumpy Gus, bringing you the Weekly Gristle. Have a great one!