At some point, Americans are going to have to square with the resounding failure of our two-party political system by shedding the dysfunctional loyalty most voters have to either a Democrat or Republican affiliation. Why? Because neither party delivers anything resembling representative government any more. We elect politicians whose primary mission is continuity of government at our expense.

The allegiances to the modern American Democrats or Republicans are based on well-crafted illusion, disseminated by corporate media on behalf of the two-party political machine. It is brilliant in its simplicity. As long as voters are polarized, the status quo is guaranteed. What self-respecting Democrat will ever vote for a Republican, and vice versa? Couple this with a stranglehold on the primary system, including nonsensical gerrymandering to protect incumbents, and you have a control grid that is efficient and manageable. (See RCReader.com/y/primary.)

The minute voters decide that the candidates presented for election are unacceptable - and as a result cross party lines, or better yet abandon those lines altogether and choose third-party candidates en masse - things will begin to change in a hurry. Americans do not give enough weight to the desperate desire of politicians to be re-elected.

Both establishment Democrats and Republicans are openly progressive - a political/socioeconomic philosophy advocating government as the means to solve society's problems. Liberal or conservative has become a purely rhetorical differentiation, evidenced by the voluminous growth in all levels of government regardless of which party is in control. Growth in government is not just exponential growth in debt and spending; it includes ever-increasing and deliberately vague legislation that results in explosive amounts of regulation that can then be arbitrarily enforced.

Media has become public enemy number one. News is now controlled by six major corporations globally. Nothing can dial that back unless Americans expand their sources for relevant information. If your news diet is mostly CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or CBS, consider yourself largely misinformed. The degree of need-to-know information flowing from these outlets is practically nonexistent, regardless of your political-party affiliation.

What Americans need to do is re-evaluate exactly what constitutes our individual political identities by taking an honest inventory of the policies and programs supported by our respective party representation. This means examining their voting records, not their rhetoric or speechifying. Excellent resources for learning relevant facts about politicians and their activities are VoteSmart.org, OpenCongress.org, GovTrack.us, OpenSecrets.org, and many other Web sites dedicated to bringing reliable information that educates and informs. It is up to each of us to connect dots and pierce the two-party political veil.

By personally examining the activities of government through the prism of our specific political ideologies, perhaps we will shake ourselves awake when we realize how far afield we are from not only liberal and conservative principles alike, but from a just and moral people. Below are a few severely egregious acts to get you started.

• Targeted drone killings that have resulted in mass casualties of innocent men, women, and children around the globe.

• State executions of innocent men and women even when DNA evidence says the convictions are unjust.

• Medicating the public drinking water supply with the neural toxin hexafluorosilicic acid under the guise of impacting one's dental health through a non-topical application. (See RCReader.com/y/fluoridation.)

• Extreme, cruel treatment of animals in mass production of food, fiber, and other products.

• Variances from regulations approved for favored corporations that profit industry and poison residents (food, pharma, energy).

• No national database tracking civilian deaths, wrongful or otherwise, caused by police officers.

• Prosecutorial immunity for attorneys and judges who get it wrong, imprisoning innocents for decades.

• Grand and petit juries being legislated into obscurity, creating judicial kingdoms for mass incarceration of the most vulnerable due to lack of resources to defend against the legal system.

• Pharmaceutical immunity for vaccines and other drugs that cause harm.

• Nonjudicial review for mortgage foreclosures that allows banks to use fraudulent documentation to secure writs that evict legitimate owners from their homes.

• Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a privately owned corporation replacing county recorders tasked with permanently documenting land transfers, thereby preserving integrity of chain of titles for private property.

• Nonsensical gerrymandering of voting districts designed specifically to protect incumbents.

• Veterans inhumanely unserved, including more than 365 days waiting for disability claims to be processed.

• Denying critical health care to veterans because they don't live in reasonable proximity to VA hospitals.

• Asset-forfeiture laws that allow government to seize people's assets upon arrest but without a conviction.

• Disregard of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which requires due process - under which searches and/or seizures of persons, houses, papers, and effects via an oath-backed demonstration of probable cause are strictly prohibited.

• Secret mass surveillance of innocent Americans that violates the bedrock constitutionally protected right to be secure in our persons, properties, papers, and effects.

• Secret government courts (FISA) that create secret laws that are enforced with gag orders to prevent Americans from learning of such gross violations.

• Retaliation against whistleblowers in both the public and private sector to discourage employees from coming forward to report serious wrongdoings they've observed.

• Intrusive groping and radiation screening at airports of millions of innocent Americans, including exposure for TSA employees to daily radiation doses without their consent.

• Parts of the STOCK Act quietly repealed by Congress for the purpose of personally enriching members because it allows for insider trading via IPOs and other financial advantages that would otherwise be considered a crime if the general population engaged in these sames practices.

Fill in any I missed for yourself.

These are only the tip of the iceberg of policies, activities, and a general ethos in government that has defied its constitutionally enumerated purpose with impunity because Americans are not doing their part in holding representatives accountable for any of it.

What kind of people - with core principles of equality in liberty and justice that boasts a republic under the rule of law, complete with a Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights - would suffer these ongoing, ever-increasing political atrocities?

We elect the representatives who enact these monstrous policies, so do not think for a moment that any of us gets a pass when held to account at the Pearly Gates, especially considering the great suffering that results. These activities by government are our doing by proxy, and we are the only ones who can undo them. So take a hard look and decide once and for all if any of the above is acceptable. Then suck it up and vote the incumbents who represented you wrongly in these matters out of office. You need not fear electing the opposite party because there is not a dime's worth of difference. In other words, voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil, so shame on you for excusing yourself for the repulsive act.

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