Our political system is broken. We have a serious problem with the way that our government "serves" us as the American people, and the problem is that we have made it nearly impossible to fix.
The lack of political parties has doomed us as Americans. We have Democrats and Republicans, and Independents have become irrelevant. We feel forced to identify with one party or the other, even when we don't entirely want to. We have to choose between being blue and red, with no real chance to chose the middle ground.
It has become incredibly difficult for us to fix the problem that our system has created. In theory, a two party system is great, because it puts people into one of two categories, and the desires of the country are easily identifiable, because the dominating party is the dominating view. But the problem lies in the fact that there are just too many issues that need addressing, and now we are forced to prioritize them. We have to decide whether climate change, government spending, social justices or immigration is the most important issue in our lives. We are forced to side with candidates that do not represent what we want except on the issue that we deem "most important." And the problem is that the candidates are forced to do the same. We watch the debates as the candidates stand there and accuse each other of flip flopping on issues, because they know that the only way they will receive their parties nomination is to have the most extreme views of the party which with they most closely identify. A republican who supports gay marriage or raising the minimum wage is just as doomed to fail as the democrat who supports gun owner's rights or opposes immigration. The candidates are forced to fit the mold of one of the two broken parties, just because it is the only chance that they have at winning.
The problem is that there is no easy fix to the issue at hand. We cannot simply change the system in a matter of days or weeks. But we need a political revolution. It is time that Americans had the opportunity to vote for candidates that represent them. We should not have to vote for a candidate that we do not feel embodies us as Americans. The revolution must start at a state level. Candidates have to stop labeling themselves as democrat or republican. They must begin to run as independents, and we as voters must choose the best person for the job, not just the person with whom we identify most closely. We need changes that start locally and work their way up through the system, but the revolution starts with us. The great thing about America is that we, the people, should have the power. It is our time to take the power back into our own hands and out of the system taht we allow to control us.
