The Bipolarchy Mind: Fewer Candidates = 'Real Choice'

Allow me to introduce Larry Penner of Great Neck, NY, to the wider world. Larry wrote a letter to the Albany Times Union that ran in Sunday's paper. I'm reprinting the letter in full because it's a spectacularly damning illustration of the Orwellian mentality that sustains the American Bipolarchy. Penner's subject is the political future of Conservative gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, who lost a primary contest for the Republican line to Carl Paladino last Tuesday. For Penner, Lazio's obligation in partial defeat is obvious.

Rick Lazio should acknowledge Republican voters who have overwhelmingly selected Carl Paladino as the best candidate to challenge longtime liberal Democratic state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for governor. Next step is for Lazio to decline the Conservative party endorsement. The Conservative Party committee on vacancies can stand up for its long lost principles of lower taxes, limited government and free enterprise by endorsing Paladino. Lazio can go back to Wall Street earning several million dollars per year. Voters would be offered a real choice, rather than Lazio remaining on the ballot as a spoiler.

For Penner, Lazio has no right to appeal to the broader electorate as the better qualified person for the job of governor. The decision of Republican primary voters, in his view, is binding on all professed conservatives. Anyone who believes in "lower taxes, limited government and free enterprise" is obliged, as far as Penner's concerned, to vote for Paladino. For conservatives to have a choice among candidates in the general election, Penner writes, is not a real choice. To the Bipolarchy mind, the "real choice" is a compulsory one, the choices having been determined before anyone got on the ballot. In our time, that means Americans must choose between liberalism (as defined by the Democratic party) and conservatism (as defined by the Republican party); the possibility of choosing between or among conservatives, or to choose between or among liberals, only distracts voters from the real choice as defined by the Bipolarchy. A normal person wouldn't think that an expanding number of choices made his or her choice less "real." But when an acolyte of the American Bipolarchy like Larry Penner writes about a "real choice" he really means that Americans have no choice. Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans may not like one another and may want to destroy each other, but to the extent that both perpetuate the "real choice" myth they are active collaborators in a Bipolarchy that is designed to limit Americans' freedom of choice. Larry Penner may be all for limited government and free enterprise, but he is no believer in political freedom.