Notes From A Burning House

Two of Algernon's Play To Be Broadcast

2009-11-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

KUNM FM, Albuquerque public radio, will air the program You Have Five Minutes at 6:00 PM (Mountain time) on November 29. You can also hear it on-line at the station's website.

Two of the plays, Simulated Drowning and The Heart Has No Location, were written by your humble correspondent.

Many thanks to producer Lance Axt for the opportunity, and the info on the broadcast.

Pops and the Spankers

2009-11-10T20:47:00.000-08:00

Pretty dismal mood tonight.

Gave up everything, sat, and then looked for ukulele videos on line. Found a nice one I hadn't seen: Pops Bayless singing and playing with the Asylum Street Spankers at a reunion concert. Thanks for the fun.

The Weeping Cashier

2009-11-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

Had to make a run to the Peppers supermarket last night. I needed a gift for my "secret pal."

At school, we have "secret pals." We leave each other little gifts and cards during the year. I was looking for my secret pal's favorite beverage. They did not have it for sale, so I picked up a few other items we needed: olive oil, some chips, that kinda thing.

The cashier rang up my purchase without saying a word. I noticed that she was weeping through the entire transaction.

Don't know.

Casting my Neti

2009-11-07T21:03:00.000-08:00

Today, Dr. Stuetzer up in Silver City recommended I try a neti pot.

He had to explain to me what that was, and then bustled me to the Silver City Food Co-op to see if they had one in stock. I followed him in, hoping they would be "temporarily out" of them. Somehow the idea of flushing my nostrils with warm saline solution was intimidating.

(Personal sidebar: I'm a big baby about medical stuff, even though I am CPR/First Aid trained. In an emergency, I can cope; and I witnessed my son's birth without feeling queasy. And yet: can't put contact lenses in my eyes; have a hard time with blood, cuts, scrapes, etc.; can't look in the mirror when the dentist works on me, have to look away when getting a shot or blood drawn -- I even fainted once. The idea of flushing my nose grossed me out although, years ago, I got into the habit of washing my eyes in warm water and that never bothered me. So who knows?)

The neti pots were in stock, so I bought one and made my first attempt at using it tonight. The device is a simple thing, yet something about the neti pot felt a bit intimidating as I held it in my grasp for the first time.

The directions are simple enough: mix 1/4 tsp. of non-iodized salt into a cup of lukewarm water, stir well. The way it is supposed to work is by tipping your head at just the right angle, making a seal between the pot's spout and your raised nostril, so water flows easily through your nasal passage and out through the lower nostril into a sink or basin.

The sample photograph in the pot's instructions shows a woman gaily flushing her proboscis but did not illustrate well how to achieve the desired angle. If you are off just a bit, the water does not pass through easily. If your head is too far back, you have trouble breathing through your mouth while doing the procedure; cock it the wrong way, and it comes down your throat.

Although the sensation of warm water in my nose was not unpleasant, I just about threw my back trying to find the right angle...

So I did what modern and hip people do, and took my question to the internet, that magic 8-ball of a fact-finder. Google led me to some YouTube videos that demonstrated use of the neti pot, some sillier than others.

Even so, it took quite a bit of contorting to feel like I was doing it halfway correctly...

It will probably take a few tries to master the technique. In the meantime, I now know to be ready to blow my nose in abundance once I am through.

A Note Regarding Honduras

2009-11-07T06:09:00.001-08:00

[Similar email message sent to the State Department and the White House. It took less than five minutes.]

Dear ______,

Our policy regarding the coup in Honduras simply does not make sense. I have one suggestion to make as a way to move forward.

As things currently stand, the people of Honduras have no right to peaceful assembly without arbitrary arrest. Several human rights organizations have documented deaths, torture, arbitrary detentions, and repression of news media. Indeed, I have to wonder why our government is being silent on this abuse of civil rights.

Even if the Micheletti regime halted this crackdown, there would still be less than three weeks before elections are scheduled to take place. Their normal election cycle is three months.

Under these conditions, there cannot be free elections in Honduras in November of 2009.

My suggestion, therefore, is to insist that President Zelaya be restored to power, and for elections to be scheduled three months from the date of his return and a return to a free society in Honduras. This would permit some semblance of a normal electoral process.

Failing that, we should not recognize the results of such an election.

It seems, however, that our government is preparing itself to stand behind a fraudulent process on November 29, going against the deliberate and rational opinion of other nations in our hemisphere. They are calling this what it is: a coup d'etat, plain and simple.

The honest truth is that under this new regime, civil liberties and democracy have been suspended. Will you call for their restoration in explicit terms?

Suffering in Tegucigalpa

2009-11-06T05:40:00.000-08:00

From time to time, there was a note to myself sitting on the desk to write a follow-up post on Honduras, since we took an interest in this back in the summer. That's when the President of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, was arrested by the military one morning, hustled onto a military plane in his pajamas, and flown out of the country.

It's been a dramatic time in that country. People took to the streets in large numbers demanding that their elected President be restored and, if he was suspected of any crimes, let him be tried in some accountable process. The new government leadership responded by cracking down violently on protesters: beating them, killing them, and making a number of people disappear. At the time, our nation's eyes were still on the unrest in Iran. The Honduran protests did not get much attention in our news media. They continue, undaunted, as the government has consolidated its power and restricted news organizations in that country.

The other nations in our hemisphere have lined up against the coup, insisting that Zelaya be restored to power for the remainder of his term. New elections take place later this month and a new president would take office in January. It seems a reasonable position. The regime said, in effect, no dice. Zelaya had to sneak back into his own country, and take refuge in the Brazilian embassy, calling for negotiations.

The U.S. was slippery. We claimed to be eliminating aid to the country while we in fact continued to pump money into the coup state. We negotiated a weak deal with the Micheletti regime which they have now publically flouted. We might be the lone nation in the hemisphere to recognize elections conducted by the coup regime, whereas the other nations are taking a more principled stance.

This is a very interesting story bearing on democracy in our own hemisphere, with the U.S. taking a stance against most of the states of central and south America with respect to the legitimacy of the Honduran government. I suspect, although I do not have time this morning to make my case, this has much to do with Zelaya's decision to make Honduras part of the Bolivarian Alternative (ALBA) -- something that the U.S., perhaps, does not welcome.

Mostly, I keep returning to it because my heart is sick for the protest movements in Honduras and the repression there. As with Iran, the violence being inflicted on people demanding honest democratic government is brazen, right out in the open, and has been going on since the early summer. The Iranian people took a step back for a while, but the Hondurans have not. Every day they have turned out, demanding justice, some reasonable process for dealing with the political dispute in government, and a legitimate political order. For this, they have been shot, beaten, arrested, every day.

When we see Zelaya on the news, he looks like a funny uncle with his bushy moustache and cowboy hat. The images on the streets of Tegucigalpa are much more urgent, and the failure of U.S. leadership as a defender of democracy and justice reeks of cynical mendacity.

Also, I am embarrassed that I have not used this little space to air the story myself and give it the treatment it deserves. These folks have some good updates and commentary, if you want to keep up. Thanks to Mark Weisbrot for his work on this.

The Flag Folding Ceremony in Public Schools

2009-11-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we rehearsed an all-school Veterans Day assembly, which will include among many other things the ceremony of folding the U.S. flag.

It is a lovely ceremony in concept, in which the flag of our country is folded with meticulous attention to detail, and each fold has a dedication that is said aloud. The origins of this ceremony and its text come from the armed forces, and must date after 1954 since there is a quote from the pledge of allegiance that includes the reference to God added during the Eisenhower Adminstration.

I had not witnessed the ceremony or heard its text, and I began to feel uncomfortable with the specific religious content.

The fourth fold represents our weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to Him we turn in times of peace as well as in times of war for His divine guidance.

This a theological teaching belonging to one religious tradition. But there is more than this, with references to "the eternal life" and to "the one who entered in to the valley of the shadow of death." With the final two folds, it is implied that this is a country for the Hebrew or the Christian citizen:

The eleventh fold, in the eyes of a Hebrew citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies, in their eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The twelfth fold, in the eyes of a Christian citizen, represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in their eyes, God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.

The rest of us, I suppose, are just visitors? A different class of citizen? The language belongs to the school of thought that the United States is primarily a Christian nation that tolerates citizens who are different.

Something should be said. Our children are impressionable, and this kind of messaging is precisely why the teaching of religion in public schools is not permitted. We are not here to teach children that in order to feel like they really belong to this country, they have to believe in the God of the Old Testament or any God. The flag folding ceremony is a sly way to get in some religious instruction. I should say something yet I do not feel comfortable, to be frank. For fear over my job I might well keep silent and thus fail, myself, to uphold our Constitution.

Monday Morning Gabriel

2009-11-02T05:36:00.001-08:00

Smashing The Mirror

2009-11-01T05:33:00.000-08:00

Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture of 2005 (he had won the prize for literature) is worth reading in full.

His subject was "Art, Truth, and Politics." As well, he could easily have been talking about the borderland between dharma practice and politics:

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

Replace the word "writer" in the above with "dharma student," and you get the idea.

Pinter describes an event he witnessed at a U.S. embassy in the 1980's, at a time when our federal government was providing assistance to a violent insurgency in Nicaragua:

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

Some time this week, the United States Congress may hear a resolution to kill a United Nations report on what happened between Israel and Gaza in the winter of 2008 and 2009. Some call it "Operation Cast Lead," and some call it a massacre. The facts do not exonerate the Hamas government, or Israel. What is clear is that a great many helpless and innocent people were killed.

The U.N. Human Rights Council investigated and has issued a report on its findings. This is not holy scripture, but it deserves to be read and discussed. For political reasons, however, there is a House resolution "Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the 'Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora."

In other words, tearing up the report and refusing to discuss it. In war, innocent people always suffer.

I have been in touch with my Congressman, and I have asked him to vote "NO" on H. Res. 867. Perhaps you will, too. It's one small gesture. Voting "no" is not an endorsement of the report's findings; but it is an endorsement for reading, listening, thinking about the violence of governments, and the suffering of innocents.

Because I think the late Harold Pinter was correct: seeing the real truth of our lives and our societies, including certainly the use of our armies, is mandatory.

Hello, U.K. and All Our Other Readers, Too

2009-10-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

Over the past week, I've been paying attention to this blog's statistics. (I usually don't.)

The first thing that surprised me: people actually are reading this blog.

The second thing that surprised me: a lot of those people are in the U.K. On some days, there are more readers from the U.K. than from the U.S. and Canada combined.

Content-wise, the politically oriented posts seem to generate more interest than dharma-related posts, although my son Gabriel is also a popular attraction. Videos of him, however, are not as popular as photographs and stories about him.

So hello to you! However you have found us, thank you for dropping in and please feel free to drop a line, adore my son, and contribute your ideas.

How One Tires

2009-10-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

The first flat was bad news. I parked and as I left the car, I heard the hissing sound and lo, the tire was low. In the parking lot of the church, no less.

Some time after affixing the donut to my wheel, I discovered the second flat.

So I rolled into a gas station, fixing to fill that other flat up with air in hopes it would get me to the tire shop.

Put fifty cents in the air machine.

The air machine was broken.

How was your day?

Calling Things What They Are

2009-10-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

My wife woke up at 3:59 AM wondering if the house was locked up. At 4:00 AM, I was stumbling around the house verifying that our compound was secure. After that, I never got back to sleep, so I did some reading.

Over the last several weeks, an old friend from high school who found me on Facebook has somehow engaged me in an exercise over "trickle-down" economics, the philosophy that if you ease the tax burden on the wealthiest citizens (the ones who own companies or are in a position to invest), enough economic activity will be stimulated to pay for the lost revenue and bring prosperity to the lower orders by increased production and jobs.

Offering me proof of this religion, he threw reports by the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute at me -- a lot of disproven claims and theories that have been debunked by CBO reports and surveys of job growth/stagnation, construction, retail figures, etc. An impatient feeling had been creeping into my consciousness as I dutifully read these things he wanted me to read, and after inquiring into the source of this impatience it's because I feel, in a way, this is all scratching the left foot when the right foot is itching.

There is a very simple political relationship at the center of this, and all this economic flummery is just so much stage smoke, attempting to legitimize our social order with a patina of pseudo-science.

It isn't science, it's politics. A very simple political disposition, really: the social order favors those who have power. Let's call it what it is, and do what we need to do.

Our Oatmeal is Low In CO2!

2009-10-28T06:22:00.001-07:00

The Swedes are experimenting with putting carbon emissions information right on the food label.

Fascinating.

On Name-Calling by Matthew Hoh

2009-10-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love."

Those words were spoken by Matthew Hoh, a highly respected officer in the Foreign Service who recently resigned over the war in Afghanistan. Even while explaining his concerns about the strategic purpose of our presence in Afghanistan, a critical analysis serious enough to catch the attention of the White House and the Pentagon, who prevailed on him not to go.

It's a strange comment, distancing himself from ordinary citizens who question this and other wars, and smearing people who agree with him on an important issue. For fear of being stereotyped himself, he gladly airs a stereotype about other Americans.

I don't know what a "peacenik" is, it seems to be an epithet designed to associate pacifists and war critics as radicals. Pot-smoking hippies? Well, there may be some, but from what I've seen, the majority of people who have asked serious questions about our wars are more like Hoh: serious and concerned citizens who think for themselves.

More Sit-Ins: Patients, Not Profits

2009-10-26T15:25:00.001-07:00

A new wave over the next few days. Here are the cities:

Albuquerque, Atlanta, Augusta (GA), Baltimore (MD), Columbus (OH), Detroit, Glendale (CA), Louisville (KY), Newark (NJ), New York City, Philadelphia (PA), Portland (OR), Rochester (NY), San Diego (CA), San Francisco (CA), Seattle, Sunrise (FL), Virginia Beach (VA), Warwick (RI) -- proud of my home state!

I can help put you in contact with local organizers if you wish.

Monday Morning Gabriel

2009-10-26T06:09:00.001-07:00

Billionares For Wealth Care Strike Again, Brilliantly

2009-10-24T22:38:00.000-07:00

Rachel Maddow gleefully reporting on a brilliant prank by the Billionares For Wealth Care.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Franken on Bankruptcies

2009-10-22T21:45:00.001-07:00

Unions Have Inner Demons, Too

2009-10-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

...any movement of the poor is a fragile thing; it will be beset by demons from without and within. The external enemies are well-known, constant irritants and often overwhelmingly powerful. Those inside the union are more subtle, yet nearly as destructive: leaders have big and conflicting egos, gender and racial tensions are hard to overcome, people have honest differences about goals and strategies, and it is enormously difficult to create the selfless bureaucracy that alone will ensure the movement's continuity.

--Michael D. Yates

Yates has shared a compelling recollection of Cesar Chavez and how his union became something very different and sinister than what its ideals expressed. Very interesting and insightful.

Correct Relationship and Labor

2009-10-21T22:15:00.000-07:00

"If to produce cheap and excellent nail scissors, we have to reduce the workers to machines, we would do better to cut our fingernails with our teeth."

--Simon Rodriguez

Green Party Missing Out on Farming and Rural Issues?

2009-10-20T05:52:00.001-07:00

The Green Party has never exactly felt like home, and here is one more reason.

Looking over the national party's "Speakers Bureau," a list of speakers and topics available for events across the country, I startled at what was missing from the list of topics.

The Green Party can send someone to your event to speak on women's rights, non-violence and militarism, civil liberties and constitutional issues, labor, immigration, health care, and even foreign policy.

But agriculture? Nothing. The closest we get to agriculture is sustainable economic development (which, one would hope is clear by now, has to include agricultural reform).

If there is any mention of the food sovereignty movement anywhere on the Green Party website, I missed it. One would think the Green Party would find common cause with the IFDP (aka "Food First!") and be speaking on this important matter.

Indeed, there is a swath of rural outreach that the Green Party might be doing as an advocate for small food producers and local food systems. People who live in rural areas are often suffering the 'downstream' effects of commodity extraction, and here, too, the Green Party could be an important organizer of people.

My communications with the Party about this have been slow -- it is not a wealthy political party, so they have no full-time staffers. I got a reply from someone at national referring me to the New Mexico Green Party, but not responding to the substance of my comment.

Come on, Greens. Take a trip out of the cities, come into the country and meet folks. There is a lot of work to be done.

Monday Morning Gabriel

2009-10-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

Sitting Zen: Another Kind of Social Action

2009-10-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

...and then there is the original social action, the practice of shamatha or stopping, returning to "no point of view," resting the intellectual activity that is concerned with history and policy and resuming the basic awareness practice of zen.

Tomorrow, at a ranch a few miles outside of town near the mountains, the Deming Zen Group holds its second meditation retreat. At the chapel pictured above, five of us will sit and walk and eat together in silence, letting go of the precious accumulations of our thinking and arriving at our only true home.

The preceding posts on public affairs are not exactly a separate activity from Zen. Dishes need to be done, children need to be taught how to behave, weeds need to be dealt with. Bills must be paid and votes must be cast. Our world is one that requires choices. Making good choices, in turn, requires clarity, intimacy, and a deep understanding of our responsibility for the wholeness of life.

In that sense, retreats are another kind of social action.

A Reader's Question on Health Care

2009-10-16T20:34:00.000-07:00

Pam, a long-time reader of this blog, asks:

Just out of curiosity, Alg, what is the health care reform you endorse and how do you think we get to it from here? Also, how do we pay for it?

Herewith, a sketch of systemic health care and insurance reform I would whole-heartedly endorse, because I believe it is what we need to do.

Universal single-payer coverage similar to Medicare, with small co-pays at rates commensurate to income. Working people would contribute to its funding through payroll deductions (which most of us who have health care through work are paying anyway, to private insurance companies). Employers would also contribute, as they do now, but at tiered rates so as not to burden smaller businesses excessively or subsidize larger businesses excessively.

Funding from the general budget can also be made available, but only if there is extensive budget and tax reform to accommodate this new priority. A reallocation of public money from subsidizing the private sector through bloated private military contracts, bailouts, and judicious cuts in bloated military spending (and anticipating an objection: significant savings can be achieved without jeopardizing national security). These are areas through which our republic bleeds many billions of dollars per year, and should be reformed for the sake our country's economic system if not for its soul. As for tax reform, it is time for a progressive tax policy where people pay a share for public service that is commensurate with their means.

The challenges we face demand systemic changes.

What I am suggesting would largely kill off the health insurance industry as we know it, although there would likely still be niche markets for private enterprise. Aflac , for instance, has health-related policies that do not provide insurance coverage per se, but promise you payouts of cash in the event of cancer diagnosis, hospitalization, and other medical events. I haven't thought about it much, but I'm guessing these could thrive in a United States that provides its citizens with public health coverage.

Now, a question of my own:

Have you never asked how we pay for our present system?

We do, in fact, currently spend more on health care than any country in the world. Trillions of dollars, we spend. As of 2004, we were spending 16% of our GDP on health care. Many billions of dollars are spent just on executive salaries and bonuses for the insurance company cartel -- that is billions of dollars spent without applying a single bandaid, not one spoonful of hyperoxide, not even a magazine in the waiting room of your community's understaffed health clinic.

The money we spend on our present system, which literally kills people and drives them into bankruptcy, is more than enough to fund a decent single-payer system that covers every citizen.

And it is the right thing to do. Just as an aside.

There is already a bill languishing in the United States Senate. The House has a bill, too.

Other countries have achieved this in various ways. None of them has a perfect system; but they all have decent systems. To borrow a phrase from the current President, it can be a tragic mistake to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Ironically, President Obama frequently makes this mistake himself.

The flaws of these other health care systems are highlighted in order to scare U.S. citizens away from thinking about single-payer health care, but what they do not highlight is that these other health systems, while imperfect, are still cheaper and better than what we're stuck with.

Unfortunately, the best hope we have for health reform in a generation is this weird monstrosity of a public marketplace for private insurance companies to continue selling their premiums, force people by law to buy their premiums (thus giving them a bonanza of new customers), and it seems we aren't even going to get the option of a non-profit entity to compete with the privateers even though polls consistently show the public wants that option.

But it is not about what you or I want. It's not about what's best for you or your grandsons. We aren't what matters. We are expendable, Pam. That is the economic order in which we really live. You have been subsidizing, for quite some time, the luxuries of people who exert influence over your life yet care not one tiny whit about your welfare. And they work very hard at getting you to believe that this is the only way it can ever be. It's a lie.

And things will never be any different until a greater number of us are willing to treat it as a call to their country's defense, to be a pain in the ass, to write and call and sit-in and teach-in (or be taught-in) and organize and campaign and go to jail and maybe even get roughed up, but never give up.

These events always precede important social progress. It does not come from electing someone President and hoping the work will get done. It comes when people take over the streets and say NO in a voice that can no longer be ignored without embarrassment or insomnia.

"You have the bills! Reconcile them and get them to the President! Dare him to veto it!"

It always comes from the bottom up. And actually, that's probably how it should be, don't you think?

Obama and Duopoly

2009-10-16T10:20:00.000-07:00

"I believe in a two-party system where ideas are tested and assumptions are challenged."

--Pres. Barack Obama on October 15

The problem is, that is not what a two-party system (duopoly) does. It preserves the status quo; it protects the basic assumptions on which that status quo rests.

Which might be okay if things were working well. The times, however, require a politics that does allow us to re-examine some of the assumptions on which our social order rests.

Just to run off a quick list: it's time to retire the "trickle-down" economic fantasy and work on "bubble up" systems, putting more democracy into economic policy (we never voted, after all, on the murderous health care system that is currently lording over us, or on industrial agriculture getting to patent seeds, or any of a host of life-altering economic policy decisions), and it is time for serious conversations about the reality of petroleum prices, and how much of our daily lives and budgets are tied to it, because there will be lifestyle-changing events related to petroleum in my lifetime.

There are many more for that list, but I think that's enough to make the point.

Our two-party dictatorship does not allow for testing those ideas or challenging any of our unconsidered assumptions about how to order our lives and communities. It can't even deliver some simple and sensible regulations of the private health insurance industry -- the corporations are, in fact, more powerful than our Congress. This is not our government; it is not accountable to us in any meaningful way. Vote out a Democrat, you'll either get a Republican or some other Democrat.

The duopoly is effective at one thing: preserving power for these two parties alone, and keeping other political parties that might test their ideas and challenge their way of conducting business -- the libertarians, the socialists, the greens -- out of power and sidelined in elections.