Obama should just declare martial law at this point (user search)

Our democracy is dead. So don't put your hopes in it. It's dead. And honestly, it would still be dead even if Hillary had won.

We're stuck in a perpetual two-party system that isn't even about who we want in office, no, it's about who we hate the least. It's breathtakingly obvious when we just had an election where we were asked to choose between two candidates who are both hated by the majority of Americans. People ran looking for alternatives but were told at every turn "You really don't want Clinton/Trump in there, do you? You have to vote for Trump/Clinton to stop that! What if your vote decides the election? What if it does?!? What if it does?!?" and were basically hypnotized into choosing what they felt was the slightly lesser evil. It honestly barely mattered whether Clinton or Trump won this year - they were both terrible candidates that showed how little hope there is for our political system.

The bipartisan commission on presidential debates jumped in too, setting a polling standard that no alternative could ever meet, or at least not when the polling companies were not including them on their *initial* horserace question in a survey (instead including them much later in the survey when people may have grown tired of it and hung up), and in at least one case, were actually deliberately under sampling millennials (I can prove this) to drive third party numbers down. It was a conspiracy to keep up the two-party system in a year where there was a credible threat to its well-being.

Meanwhile, Evan McMullin was drafted into the race at the last minute. While we were told he was the "true conservative alternative" that would "truly shake up the race", the reality is probably that he was drafted by someone looking to protect the two party system by splitting the third party vote. Ultimately, his popularity with mormons was such that this idea nearly blew up in their faces - give Clinton Michigan and Pennsylvania, and give McMullin Utah, and you get a no-majority scenario, and who truly knows where that ends? But the key word there is nearly. It didn't actually occur.

"Who do you hate the least?" should never be the central question of an election in a democracy. But it was this year, far beyond anything we've ever seen before. And it shows that our democracy is beyond repair.

Several million americans, including myself, managed to stand up to this system, but just as the major parties wanted, we were split, and as a result, none of the alternatives reached the major-party-status-earning 5% of the vote despite the vote for all alternatives combined totaling 5.7%.

What is the answer the third parties give us as to who will finally break the system? A barely-eligible athiest with reservations about the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (Petersen)? Men who want to abolish the government entirely? (Kokesh/DW Perry) Far-Left loons like Stein? Far-right freaks like Castle? None of these sound the least bit viable.

In a two-party system, with politicians who most americans hate but who box themselves in with favorable districts and antagonizing or delegitimizing anyone who runs against them, with presidential primaries that may contain superdelegates who are allowed to endorse long before any actual primaries are held (superdelegates should be kept, but be prohibited from endorsing anyone before January of the year of the applicable GE), and are conducted in a way where extreme partisans in the deep south esssentially decide the nominee, it's clear that our democracy is dead.

May as well declare martial law for the time being, and in time, figure out a completely new system. I see little hope for our current one.

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