Compromise.Sounds like a dirty word today, doesn’t it?It isn’t terribly uncommon to hear politicians couched as “uncompromising warriors,” people of ideological purity and conviction ready to fight the greedy men in government.What never gets said is there are people of equal ideological purity and conviction on “the other side.” What never gets mentioned is the “uncompromising warrior” is human and might be wrong, and what never gets thought of is maybe somebody else might have a good idea.And nobody seems to remember the “man of ideological purity” talking about “fighting business as usual” is soon to be just another rusty cog in the great broken machine of our democracy.Everyone forgets the democratic process is inherently meant to be one of compromise.We heard Republicans say “Go back to the drawing board,” countless times during the health care debate.  What that really meant, of course, was “get this health care legislation out of here entirely because we refuse to accept that you could conceivably be right about anything.”It makes sense politically — in a kind of Machiavellian, self-serving, totally-counterproductive-to-our-democratic-process kind of way. By stonewalling legislation and progress, the minority party can make the majority party look ineffectual, and then sweep back into power.The majority never seems terribly interested in compromising either. By mistaking majority as a mandate without restrictions, they think they can and should do whatever they think is right — minority be damned.It isn’t a Democratic problem or a Republican problem.It’s an everybody problem.Unfortunately, that means it’s a difficult problem to fix. As politicians became more and more entrenched, the symbiotes that latch onto those politicians — the national media and active political interest groups — follow suit.Today, every major political or social issue is framed in terms of Republicans vs. Democrats. There is no middle ground; there is no mutually acceptable solution — there is only war. And, instead of covering the real substantive policy arguments for each side, the media chooses to pontificate and speculate on which party is winning.Meanwhile, activist groups feed off the negative energy and unequivocally align themselves with either side of the bi-prismatic spectrum. It becomes too standard to accuse those opposed to their positions of being wrong, so activists begin calling them stupid, ignorant and evil — or socialist or racist, depending upon the flavor.We have a whole huge regime of closed-mindedness and bitterness and, given the plummeting participation rates we’re seeing all over the country, it seems the average American is tired of it.So I ask again — how do we fix it?Is the solution a third party? Maybe. But broader than that, the solution is for average people to stand up, get mad about it and hold their political figures accountable. Congress has approval ratings that would make skinheads shiver. Yet it still has an incumbency rate well above 75 percent. We hate our Congress, but we can’t be bothered to figure out what we think of our congressmen.More people are yearly registering independent than Republican or Democrat, yet both parties are still beholden to the most extreme ends of their ideologies, always pushing further and further to the edges of the spectrum.Young voters, like college students, are increasingly independent of parties, but a pitiful percentage of us ever take the time to vote, let alone more actively participate.How do we fix it?We don’t give up on the system because it sucks, as I suspect most Americans have. We refuse to accept the false dichotomy of our parents, refuse to believe that those that disagree with us are ignorant or evil. We refuse to accept that there are only two answers to every question, and that the solutions we come up with individually cannot be reconciled together. And, most importantly, we refuse to vote for any old rich guy that does.How do we fix it?We get up and do something about it.Matthew Albright is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_malbright.—————Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]