Now that the move to Colorado is over, I've had time to do something more constructive: hunt the web for blogs and content related to Dumping the Duopoly. The Poli-Tea blog is a great resource, as well as the Third Party and Independent Daily.
What I found most heartening was a recent op-ed column by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman titled, "Third Party Rising". Friedman is correct to identify the US as not inexorably on the road to decline (but not to deny the obvious signs around of said decline), as well as pointing to the techno-anarchists of Silicon Valley as a source of the grass-roots energy out there that is beginning to focus in on what is the real problem with our country; a political system that disallows competition and reifies the corporatist duopoly. The Tea Party Movement is an obvious example in this regard as well.
Is there any way we can harness this energy to overturn the duopoly applecart? Though Tea-Poli cites others on the possibility for a Libertarian-Green Alliance, I personally don't think this will go very far. The diversity of political opinion in this country is one of our strengths, and to attempt to make a melting pot of that will only muddle the message and piss off core supporters. Though it is too late for the 2010 election cycle, it would be better for independent parties to form loose coalitions around ballot initiatives or other means to modify ballot access laws and otherwise chip away at the Duopoly's tools to maintain political supremacy. Any student of US history will appreciate that change has more often come from incremental, soft-ball solutions. Nonetheless, as Thomas Jefferson once said, "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing," in which case, I would argue for the hard-ball solutions.
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