It's my party

By Deauwand Myers

Political parties are integral to all modern democracies. President Park's Saenuri Party and its recent routing in local elections proves that when the electorate has choices at the ballot box, it will reward or punish accordingly.

Internationally, the last few years have been some of the most interesting in terms of observing the ebb and flow of political parties and their waning and waxing fortunes.

Japan saw a brief resurgence of the more liberal Democratic Party of Japan from 2009-2012. Since the relatively successful and lengthy tenure of Prime Minister Koizumi, Japan has had an unprecedented six prime ministers from 2006-2016, with its current premiere, Shinzo Abe, having resigned way back in 2006, only to regain power in 2012.

Australia is similar. After the long tenure of John Howard, conservative premiere of the Liberal Party from 1996-2007, Australia has had five prime ministers from 2007-2016 (if you count Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party twice). In that time, control of the government has changed parties several times, with Labor and Liberal via coalitions vying for power.

In Britain, though the conservatives replaced Tony Blair's Labour Party with the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, a Muslim Briton and Labour Party member, Sadiq Khan, became mayor of London.

The "Brexit" conundrum may threaten the fairly peaceful geopolitical and international economic cohesion much of Europe has enjoyed for decades. It has also helped to reshape the political map of the United Kingdom, where the Scottish Conservative Party now has a plurality of seats over the Scottish Labour Party, becoming Scotland's second party, after the Scottish National Party, a feat not done in many years.

Throughout Europe, nationalist, protectionist, anti-immigrant, and racist political parties, long relegated to the shadows of mainstream political discourse,have had a sort of renaissance, spurred on by Europe's economic malaise and the current refugeecrisis from Syria's civil war and unrest in other parts of the Middle East. Most notably(because of its large economy, population, and advanced military) France has seen the ascension of The National Front, led by Marine Le Pen. Though she's endeavored to rid, or at least rein in, the anti-Semitic, virulently and vocally racist elements within her party, Le Pen has herself winked and nodded at these very extremist elements.

Mainly due to economic downturns and government scandals dealing with graft and corruption, leftist political parties in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela are seeing their fortunes precipitously decline.

After a decade of conservative rule in Canada under Stephen Harper, the Liberal Party resoundingly defeated the conservatives with Justin Trudeau, becoming Canada's second youngest prime minister in November of 2015.

Proceeding the disastrous rule of conservatives and Republicans for eight years under George W. Bush, America elected one of its youngest presidents, and its first black president, in November of 2008 and again in 2012.

Donald Trump's rise in America presages, say some, the destruction of the Republican Party.

Yet, relatively speaking, jobs, credit, and consumer spending are better than in most of the industrialized, advanced democracies of the world (though Americans' wages, access to healthcare, and other quality-of-life issues still lag behind their economic peers).

The only aspect of life that has recently changed is the "browning" of America; further, the young, single women, and people of color are becoming an ascendant part of the electorate in American society. America's European ancestry is waning even as the percentage of colored people within the overall populace steadily rises.

Whites, like their black counterparts, are an ever-declining part of the American voting population; their respective birthrates are not at replacement levels, and haven't been for many years.

Donald Trump's nostalgia to "make America great again," like that of Pat Buchanan, and to a softer, more attractive extent, Mit Romney's message, is a kind of ethnocentric, masculinized, simplified call to protect the power structure of white patriarchy and white hegemony in America's power structure. Any reasonable and dispassionate look at data tells us that white, male representation in all aspects of power and access in American society is firmly in place, from academia, to representative government, to the private sector, and will be so for many, many generations to come.

The extreme right and extreme left in American politics like to act as if there are no real differences between the two major political parties. Again, any reasonable and dispassionate look at data tells us otherwise, particularly on domestic and social issues (the greatest bit of ideological overlap between the parties is in foreign policy). Social security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, and a host of other programs came from Democrats.

As in countries, economic stagnation and lack of fulfilling campaign promises is why the Saenuri Party of Korea fared poorly in the recent elections.

We ought to remember that parties and their policies are important.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.

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