In this, the supposed era of post-partisanship we see an everyday display of the growing chasm that exists between Republicans and Democrats. The GOP sprinting toward the outer fringes of the right while Democrats move desperately toward the middle, fruitlessly pursuing displaced moderates. Every speech a broken promise in waiting, crafted to value party over people. Our American way of politics hopelessly broken.

Or is it? After-all our politics mirror our perception of humanity. Republicans and Democrats alike drawing from their own beliefs to form an agenda that serves (among other things) their core values. The Republican Party, historically an advocate of the wealthy have nevertheless been able to create and maintain a broad support base among ordinary Americans. They do this by effectively co-opting the social and religious values of traditional fundamentalist Christianity. A linch pin of capitalism buoyed by Puritan and Calvinist theories and a view that individuals alone can and should determine their own destiny through hard work and perseverance. A belief that abhors Government safety nets advocating consequence and for the truly afflicted Christian charity.

The history of America, as interpreted by Republicans portrays an idyllic past where this arrangement works seamlessly, a simpler and more virtuous time, and a complete fallacy. And yet this substantial and sustained lie remains, deeply imbued within the mental fabric of so many Americans, defining their psyche and ultimately determining their politics.

This remains true even as time has washed away some of Christianities cover, undermining its long held philosophies and changing, for the objective mind what it means to be human. We now know that humans are social animals and of the earth like all other animals. We humans have an incontrovertible relation with photosynthetic life which feeds us- and with the heterotrophic bacteria that remove and convert our waste. The spirit of man is not some ephemeral breath which flees the body ascending to heaven or falling to hell upon his last breath. Man’s soul is his body and his social relations. The beginning of politics is biology. If that part of it is not right we cannot legitimately wonder why the rest goes wrong.

In contrast to the Right the politics of the radical Left are based on this scientific view of humanity. A world where human beings belong to a living system in which all beings are connected with all others- and all alive today are connected with all that have lived in the past. We are neither the pinnacle nor the culmination of evolution- we are the humans, from the humus, soil- earth. The far left have the correct definition of man, the politics should follow naturally.

Daniel Collins is a contributor to Painespeak.com, he can be followed on twitter by clicking @DanielKalinz