One thing this election will do: Grow more Independents.

[Igel]

2. Dunno.

Large organizations require a certain amount of tolerance and compromise to allow millions of people to belong. You manage to agree on many of the larger and some of the smaller points, and are content with that.

These days, social networking allows separate, discrete (but overlapping) organizations around single issues, so you never have to deal adequately with people who disagree with you. In other words, we all get to scream "be tolerant" at people we're not about to put up with because they disagree with us. That allows us to want to with those pure like us. Whatever "pure" means for that particular topic.

It may be that we're moving to too atomistic, too individualistic a society, which is bad. Because such societies are easily manipulated, not being able to easily muster groups large enough to resist manipulation.

Or it may be that we'll find another way of forming large collective groups and establish parties with a different set of priorities or properties. We'll see.