The Three-Party System

We have entered the age of the multi-party system. Many of us remember the two-party system with Democrats and Republicans. In 2016, we added a third party, the Trumpublicans. While, over the years, the Democrats and Republicans have had their spots and stripes fade, change, and move around a bit, this new party is an entirely new species and deserving of its own branch on the Political Tree of Life.

Political Tree of Life. View from this side and it looks like it leans left. View it from the other side and it appears to lean right. (37°52'32.5"N 119°20'43.7"W)

The tree shown in the picture above represents the Political Tree of Life. It grows in Yosemite National Park just south of the Tuolumne Meadows parking lot off the Tioga Road in the north area of the park. I have visited this tree (Ponderosa pine??) on each of my many trips to Yosemite, beginning in 1956. I think both the tree and I have grown about 14” in the ensuing 56 years. Like our young democracy, the tree grows slowly in the harsh environment of its planting.

This representative Political Tree of Life can be viewed from many angles. If seen from one side it seems to lean left and from the other, it looks to be leaning right.  As you travel around the tree your perception changes.  If you could burrow under the rock in which this tree grows, you would see the dirty underbelly of our political system. This is the view of the Trumpublicans.

Instead of savoring the beauty of our wonderful representative government from its many above ground vantage points, they attack the roots of our democracy to suck the very sap upon which the tree’s survival depends. They do this in the name of greed and financial gain. They could care less if the tree survives as long as they profit in the here and now.

Maharaja Trump and Minion Miller

Trumpublicans are evolved from primitive Republicans and through the function of natural selection and genetic political mutation; they have spawned this new species. Scientists believe that good honest Republicans chose to cohabitate and socialize with racists, homophobes, fascists, religious extremists, and even Nazis as a simple path to expanding their own numbers and breeding stock. This was not because they necessarily believed these “strange political bedfellows” but it was simply a matter of expediency to further some other part of their agenda. The power generated by their numbers is like a drug and the addiction is very difficult to kick. Once tasted, it is hard to resist the euphoria generated by the power these strangers possess and it is all too easy to make excuses for their behavior.

The Drug of Politics

A Trumpublican is a former “Republican” who has mutated and abandoned all semblance of conservatism and instead has chosen to bow down, sell their political souls, and to be herded into servitude by their new emperor, one Donald J. Trump. They thereby have given up all Republican ideals in an effort to please their President and spare his wrath. This group includes spineless politicians afraid to stand up for their own morals and beliefs in favor of the new sovereign. These are the Chrysaora of the Political Tree of Life. They have but one function and that is to drift aimlessly in the seas of our republic and to consume all the political capital that floats by.

Chrysaora

“Mom is it true that the Trumpublicans way back in 2018 failed to stand up to Trump and that’s why we now live underground eating insects and listening to old recorded episodes of Hannity?”