It doesn't help that the US is not a real democracy. For instance, the Green Party actually has in its platform many telecom and media reforms, including breaking up the big monopolies.
But you wouldn't know it, because apparently US citizens are only allowed to vote for 2 parties - ever. When the US gets proportional representation and takes money out of politics, then we can start discussing real solutions to problems.
Until then you're only going to get a "right" and a "left" argument for what benefits Corporate America, the real "People" the government listens to.
Counterpoint: if a third party can't get its act together for the clusterfuck of a Presidential election we're about to experience, it may not be entirely the system's fault.
You "can't get your act together" as a third party in a First Past the Post system. The winning strategy is always to vote for the 2 biggest parties. And the media not only strongly favors the two parties and cuts everyone else out from the discussion, but they also cut out any "grassroots" activist that is anti-establishment (unless you're already a media celebrity like Trump, which ends up getting them higher ratings).
43% of Americans are Independents, and only 29% D and 23% R. And yet most of them still end up voting D or R - do you think that just happens because they end up liking the D or R, or because it's a systemic problem that always forces them to vote for the "lesser evil"?
If you don't think this is not just a problem, but a catastrophic one for US democracy, then the media has brainwashed Americans more than I thought.
I agree with your tone, but sadly even in parliamentary systems with third and fourth parties like the UK and Canada, there is a strong bipolar two-party emphasis. And even worse the two parties that do capture power (in Canada the Liberals and Conservatives and in the UK Labour and the Conservatives) have themselves tended towards a rather homogeneous ideological mean, easily poaching policy from each other and rarely altering things that the previous party's gov't had enacted. A fairly standard neo-liberal consensus has settled over all western democracies that even the brutal crisis of 2008 couldn't shake, despite some rather horrible dysfunctions -- stagnant economic growth, growing wealth inequality, endemic poverty that doesn't go away, and a staggering slow moving long term environmental crisis that is going to make our children loathe us. Only in the periphery, in places like Greece, etc. have there been significant alterations to the political consensus, and that was quickly and efficiently snuffed out by the actions of the more "sensible" European mainstream...
In the end -- there's only one way of doing political-economy right now within the confines of western capitalist democracy. All the capital-P Politics is theatre around the margins.
What is really needed is genuine proportional representation, not FPTP (like in Britain). Another problem is that with three parties, voting for the third may siphon off votes from its nearest analogue (i.e. the NDP and Liberals in Canada under Harper).
People assumes that the underlying structure of a political party is an effective mechanism for getting power simply because a couple of parties have a lot of power. But at the grass roots political parties are just very pretentious social clubs. Trying to compete on that level seems prone to failure.
It is much easier to try and influence the direction of one of the incumbent parties by taking over the leadership (Trump) or just purchasing influence. So you get parties that are completely detached from the underlying ethos that their members naively assume exists. But actually a large party has no more ethos than a golf club or a frat house.
Numerous countries in Europe have spent the last ~50 years as rumbling political disasters while having dozens of political parties. See: Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal and a lot of others.
I've seen absolutely no evidence, anywhere on earth, that throwing more political parties at a problem solves the problem. If your culture is dysfunctional, no amount of political parties will save you.
For example in Europe you end up with the worst kind of extremists directly involved in running government, or others that get very near to doing so. Such as (supposedly former) neo-nazi parties as in Sweden or France, or literal neo-nazis as in Greece.
I would argue that the two party system in the US has provided dramatically greater stability than the numerous party systems in Europe, while keeping nearly all fascist, socialist and communist nuts out of the government. It leads to less dynamism, but far greater stability and less radicalism than what you see across Europe.
Where is this "radicalism" you're seeing in Europe? You're also talking about maybe 1 or 2 out of 30 or 40 countries, while the US is just one country.
How about you compare it to countries like Germany or Sweden or Switzerland? Countries that not only have multiple parties and proportional representation systems, but also allow their citizens to create their own laws through referendums.
There is evidence, you just never looked for it. Here is some evidence for the multiple ways in which proportional representation is better than FPTP:
The two-party system is not "stable". Look what's happening with the gridlock in Washington right now. The country is also becoming incredibly partisan and divisive, which is very toxic for democracy. Proportional systems lead to consensus and "bridge building".
And if we take your logical conclusion to the extreme, then a Chinese-like one-party system would be the "best" as it would be the most "stable". People need democracy. Why do you think 43% of Americans are registered as Independents now, and only 29% as Democrats and 23% as Republicans? Because they feel so represented by the two-party system?
That more than anything shows a huge systemical problem in the US in how elections are done. Almost half of the country doesn't feel represented by Democrats and Republicans, but you're saying that's ok because it's "bring stability".
Also, just two recent examples of the extreme corruption in the two parties that only happens because they know people don't have any other choice but support them (Dem base supporting Dems, and Rep base supporting Reps, and Independents being forced by the FPTP to pick one of those two):
Wake up Americans, you have no real choice within the two-party system. They're playing with you and giving you the theater of "democracy" in the primaries while they keep pulling the strings for who they want to win.
There are some interesting cracks opening up in the two party system. Probably the most notable is the open or blanket primary, where the two candidates getting the most votes in the primary run in the general election. I believe these are currently the case for most offices in Washington and California. In both states this was established by referendums.
http://www.gp.org/democracy#demFreeSpeech
But you wouldn't know it, because apparently US citizens are only allowed to vote for 2 parties - ever. When the US gets proportional representation and takes money out of politics, then we can start discussing real solutions to problems.
Until then you're only going to get a "right" and a "left" argument for what benefits Corporate America, the real "People" the government listens to.