Could a Drug-Fueled Maniac Be the Right Person to Lead a Common-Sense Political Movement?
Or is the America Party a symptom of the drug-fueled mania?
Elon Musk is toying with the idea of starting a new “America Party”. I don’t know how serious he is, partly because “America Party” sounds like a name a five year-old — or possibly a $300/hour McKinsey consultant — would dream up. But paperwork has been filed, and Elon’s divorce with Trump is in the throwing-shit-on-the-lawn-while-the-neighbors-call-the-cops phase, so there’s clearly no going back there. Could the America Party be a thing? Or will it just be the latest embarrassment as Elon continues his Francis Ford Coppola making Megalopolis phase?
American politics is famously hostile to third parties. That’s mostly because we have a non-Parliamentary system with first-past-the-post elections, but it’s also because “third party” in the US has often meant “a bunch of racists and/or communists who manage to give racism and/or communism an even worse name.” Third parties are often fringe-y, and thus the third party experience in the US is typically a “the grass is always greener” scenario in which the grass turns out to be weird, under indictment, and possessing some shockingly spicy beliefs about Jews.
But recently, people have wondered if a moderate third party might wedge itself in between Republicans and Democrats. It makes sense to wonder this, because the parties have drifted towards the political poles in recent years. The GOP is unrecognizable to many conservatives; they’re basically a personality cult that mixes ethnic nationalism with unfathomable stupidity. Democrats are in an intense factional fight in which they’re not sure whether their message should be “we have a plan to lower housing costs” or “Workers of the world, the revolution is nigh! Sharpen your plowshares and murder your overseers, and we shall summon the Republic of Vengeance on a tidal wave of blood!” Surely there must be room for a third party between those extremes…right?