New challenges, and crises often lead to political realignments, for they catch existing parties and their ideologies off guard, unequipped to deal with them.
Competent parties are willing and able to evolve, upgrade, and update their platform and its execution, incompetent parties collapse, incompetent countries too for that matter.
Real democracy requires at least two viable parties with meaningful differences.
They don’t have to disagree on everything, in fact at the very least they need to share a commitment to democracy itself and the survival of the nation.
Crises can sometimes bring out the best in a people, help pull them together, put aside petty squabbles, purge them of excess and corruption, boost morale and mobilize them, provided they’re not diametrically opposed over how to handle the crises, in which case they may tear them apart.
Crises test peoples and their politics, a home built on sand, with no foundation or common thread, won’t withstand the storm.
How will the west deal with the migration crisis?
How will it deal with germ hysteria and the consequent political economic crisis?
How will it deal with its identity crisis?
Is the west still the best?
Does our system require restoration, renovation or demolition?
Are our parties equipped to manage these crises simultaneously, or do we need new parties, a new paradigm for a new millennium?
Will we be able to come to some kind of consensus on where to go from here?
Since some ‘center-right’ parties have been overtaken by quasi-rightwing populists, Reaganites/Thatcherites and neocons have been abandoning them for ‘center-left’ parties, while others stayed, attempted to adapt and adopt some rightwing populist policies.
The whole idea of party affiliation relating to ‘position’ , have been obscured. Led by the Western powers, particularly the United States, the ripple effects manifested appear to have developed major and minor revisions
-flaws of perception.
The changes of definitions of various parties always obfuscated ‘political reality’ and that change of definition impacts those who are politically undecided. So defining party affiliation is not tatamountunt with the beliefs and the true intent of progressives leading those who really know what they want and expect to happen within the organization.of their party.
The switch is literally evident in the the adoption of the democratic party from previous republican party strongholds in the deep south. The tagged name shows he intent to highlight left wing ideas there, without connecting the necessary elements of those ideas across the board, connecting the dispossed, the white trash’, the blacks, and other undesirables with the upper echelons of party organization.
The motive expresses a desire to dispossess those from political power, by undermining their beliefs in the meaning and values of what democracy really is, as they know that this ticket will certainly be bought, even if the true colors have been almost perfectly dressed up to near infallible deception.
The same goes internationally with the battle of the isms: mimicking what goes in the US and GB.
The middle and the troublesome heart of Europe, caought in the crosscurrent, vacillates at the very center, divided in it’s heart at once involved at dead ideologically motivated center, and trying on differently meant party affiliations to suit the world stage, in order to gain as much interest as possible for her peoples.; trying to adopt core pragmatic power, while employing old guard traditions who have been inside the eye of the cross currents way back to the great wars, and the cold war.
Right, it’s important to distinguish party brand on the one hand, from party policy and the interests of party leaders on the other, which normally differ greatly from their constituents.
The ruling class has an interest in getting us to conflate them.
Unfortunately most people usually can’t see it, but every now and then they do.
I always encourage people to support 3rd parties and independents (or at the very least dissidents within the duopoly).
The only way to change the system is to take votes, money and energy away from the duopoly and transfer them to its opposition.
Every generation or few one or both major parties either collapses or radically changes course due to pressure from 3rd parties and independents taking most or much of their support.
Everyone interested in society and politics oughta watch Frank DiStefano’s series linked above where he covers the process behind political realignments in detail.
Crises, whether natural or synthetic, can either get people to turn their backs on the establishment, or run into their arms, depending on how people interpret it, I’m hoping the former scenario ultimately transpires.
In any case, the bigger the crises, the more politics tends to get reimagined, as it faces new challenges, and challengers.
A new party system and political paradigm can arise.
The left-right paradigm we’ve had for the last several decades has an expiry date, it won’t last forever.