Political Partisanship Shouldn’t Exist

Since the dawn of mankind itself, man has divided itself into factions. In the earliest days, man formed tribes, then nations, and in those nations man divided itself into political parties to surround himself with people who claimed to support his ideals. Now, thousands of years after man’s earliest civilizations rose and fell, our countries are still divided under this ancient system , but they shouldn’t be. Partisanship, political partisanship especially, is one of the greatest handicaps on mankind’s advancement. It discourages individual thinking and thus limits the proposals of new ideas, and instead promotes the idea of the hive mind, essentially an echo chamber that only spews out ideas as antiquated as partisanship itself. Partisanship does this by promoting the idea that, if politicians disobey any the ideals of their political party, they will lose all support and all of their power with it. This forces politicians to conform and constrict themselves to the parameters of the party they fall under, often restricting them from proposing potentially beneficial policies due to the fact that they may not agree with the ideals of said political party. Furthermore, it prevents candidates that don’t run under a political party from coming into the spotlight, candidates that could have life changing policies that they could be looking to put in place. It is this restriction on individual freedom that makes political partisanship such a danger to mankind’s advancement, and what lead to George Washington’s warning against it in his farewell address. But we can steer mankind ship off this dangerous course and move on from this antiquated system. The internet has been a powerful platform for proposing new ideas, and, if used correctly, the internet with its large outreach could be a key weapon towards defeating political partisanship through platforms like YouTube or Instagram, which could be used to promote lesser known candidates who don’t run under a political party, potentially getting rid of the cost of a campaign, which would remove one of the major restrictions of running as a non-partisan. Perhaps, the internet could bring unknown political candidates into the limelight to the same effect that it did with internet celebrities and icons, finally breaking down one of mankind’s greatest limits towards advancement in the process.