There’s an interesting George Washington quote. Well, most of his Farewell Address is interesting. There are many quotes that can be taken from the address that Washington gave, but one tends to stand out the most:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Now you see, Washington was officially an independent, meaning, he was not apart of any political party. Although he was close to the Federalists, he certainly did not have an official affiliation with them. His cabinet had members of both sides of the time, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. He is currently the only US President to officially not belong to any party. He was basically against the notation of political parties because the immense power they could have over the lives of the people of the United States. He feared of what they might become.

And he was right. He was right to be afraid.

Today, all power of the US Government is concentrated in two political parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. They account for almost all elected offices in the United States government. I say almost because there are a few independents here and there. They have such a control that Third parties—such as the Green Party and the Libertarians—are viewed as jokes and wasted votes when they should be treated with actual respect rather than the opposite. If we are going to have political parties, at least give us more than just two choices in the General Election.

While one could say “just choose the lesser of the two evils,” I respond with a quote by Grateful Dead lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia:

“Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.”

The system that we are currently in promotes the choosing of an evil over another, except in the times when one of the candidates is actually good. Am I being cynical? Maybe. After all, I’m a product of watching Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for a good number of years. But still, the Jerry Garcia quote and Washington’s Farewell Address makes me think that maybe the direction we are going in may not be the best one in terms of representation of the people in the government. Has the certain election changed things? It has/had the potential to certainly change things. The parties seem to be torn up from the insides, the Republicans more so than the Democrats but the Democrats still are experiencing it as well.

There just has to be more choice, more proper representation, less power given to political parties because so far the two major parties are deciding how the country is being run, although with most of them the people elected to office. It is still just a situation that needs to get better.