The Radical Independent

07/09/2025

We've been socialized to think this way by a flawed duopoly.

07/08/2025

A FairVote report released recently reveals that 18 months out from the 2026 midterm elections, 81% of House seats are already predictable with near-absolute certainty -- while only 9% of races are projected to be true tossups.
“It makes sense that over 80% of Americans don’t feel like elected officials care what they think. Over 80% of Congress is effectively guaranteed re-election,” said Meredith Sumpter, President and CEO of FairVote.
What systemic changes do you want to see to bring more competition to Congress?

New analysis from the nonpartisan better elections group FairVote reveals a grim picture of American democracy: Congressional elections are becoming even less competitive and easier to predict -- with the vast majority of House seats effectively decided long before voters cast their ballots.

07/08/2025

Should we mix politics and work? Some complain that people must want to deny important rights to individuals if they even question whether politics ought to be a part of business. Others say that politics has no place in the workplace.
It does seem as though politics has invaded every aspect of our existence and it’s damaging to a healthy, balanced life. Over politicizing everything makes us worse and everything around us worse. Politics can destroy your soul. It’s fundamentally antisocial and corrodes our ability to live in harmony with others. We need something different than the extreme in-your-face partisanship that’s dominating today.

Corporate activism, what we discuss at work, and 5 links worth your time

07/08/2025

Critical thinking skills are difficult to master, especially when the political landscape rewards volume and ridiculousness. Drawing reasonable conclusions from valid evidence is also hard to practice when the default civil discourse setting is adversarial and the primacy of emotions dominates with identity politics. Little info-graphics like this are useful, but a big part of taking this to heart is detaching yourself from partisan and ideological echo chambers and “starting over” when it comes to what you think you know, and don’t know.

07/08/2025

You shouldn't have to feel worse about yourself after you vote 😩

07/07/2025

This is an interesting mathematical explanation on how undesirable policies can arise from polarized politics. “By playing voters against each other, we -the agenda setters- have caused them to agree on a policy that’s much worse for everyone than the original policy they began with.”

Elections might seem like they produce results people want, but that isn't always the case.This video describes the McKelvey-Schofield Chaos Theorem. To lear...

07/07/2025

"In this episode of Toppling the Duopoly, nationally-recognized expert in election reform and host Shawn Griffiths interviews John Pudner, the executive director of the nonpartisan nonprofit Take Back Our Republic.
Take Back Our Republic is committed to educating the public on conservative solutions to reform. In the process, it builds nonpartisan coalitions to take on corruption in the political process, shine a light on dark money, end partisan gerrymandering, and implement instant runoff voting (more well known as ranked choice voting) in elections."

In this episode of Toppling the Duopoly, nationally-recognized expert in election reform and host Shawn Griffiths interviews John Pudner, the executive director of the nonpartisan nonprofit Take Back Our Republic. Take Back Our Republic is committed to educating the public on conservative solutions....

07/07/2025

And disrupt we must.

07/07/2025

It really isn't a hard decision.

07/06/2025

Fear, anger, and even hate are tools for partisans in their divisive polarization campaigns for power. Fear, anger, and hate also invariably lead to authoritarianism, the subject of this article. The author lists several suggestions to keep hate at bay and ward off totalitarian inclinations of the Right and Left.
- Watch Your Fear Response
- Take Back Your Projections
- Don’t Intellectually Bully People
- See The Humanity in Others
- Take Responsibility
- Respect the Extended Order

"As human cooperation decreases and hatred increases, you too, not just the people the mandates are directed against, will suffer. The oxygen of capita ...

07/06/2025

OUR TAKE: Duopoly partisans love to show how their side won a major battle over some overhyped wedge issue. Why give credit to a shell game that gives people crumbs and tells them they're winning while the country is destroying itself and moving closer towards a split? We need to quit staring at the rotted stump in front of our faces (the obvious but incomplete and distracting) and open our eyes to the forest fire raging all around. Answer the question: Will anything truly, really get better with the Duopoly in place? You know the only answer is that we’ll just continue going back and forth between the two as things only get more unhinged, destructive, and dangerous.

Pointing to the unemployment rate or gas prices is disingenuous partisan propaganda. We have a failing two-party monopoly, with each side becoming increasingly partisan, divided, desperate, and stupid.

We need more than polarizing political clamoring, trivial meme-level thinking, and herd anger. Authentic change means refusing to play the petty partisan games and dismantling the broken two-party system that doesn’t need to deliver solutions, but only convince voters that they are the lesser of two evils.

Until we reform the system and have open, free, fair, and competitive elections (while changing the tribal emotionalism that drives politics) nothing will change. The corrupt, rigged duopoly keeps the system closed and pits American s against each other to stay in power… driving us further down the road of toxic dysfunction and failure.

There was an old Star Trek show with a powerful alien lifeform that psychically manipulates humans and Klingons into brutally fighting each other onboard the Enterprise, while feeding off their negative emotions… drawing power from their anger, violence, and bigotry. The solution to breaking the alien’s control winds up being both sides joining together joyfully to ridicule, tease, and laugh at the lifeform, which then weakens and slinks away.

Now that’s an analogy of the corrupt, rigged duopoly that I can get behind.

07/06/2025

Thoughts?