Does it really matter who governs?

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It seems to me that there is no substantive difference between the two standard sides of politics. The politicians who actually reach senior level are basically of a type, either hard-line ideologues or obsessive pragmatists, ruthless in their rise to power, and it's a hard choice as to which is worse. The problem with ideologues is inflexibility. We all have a basic ideology, but most healthy people are able to recognise when it is time to compromise, but not the ideologue, whose identity perhaps is intimately tied up with his ideology and cannot accept challenges to its validity. When ideologues dominate a parliament, they spend a large part of the time and energy which should go into governance on instead sabotaging and white-anting the opposing side's policies. Nothing productive gets done because in this polarised political world we live in, hostile houses of parliament and/or independent parties like the Greens force compromise or completely block legislation. The pragmatists are possibly worse. They do tend to get things done, but unfortunatley, in this Hyper-Capitalist world, pragmatitism almost invariably translates as "bottom-line", and since bottom-line policies also almost invariably benefit only the top end of town, the bulk of the population the government is supposed to be governing suffers the economic results. Not voting, assuming you have that option (we don't in Australia, it's compulsory to vote in all state and federal elections) is pointless too, because that way you end up living with the truism that you get the government you deserve. But as things stand, whichever way you vote, large numbers of you will be disadvantaged, even if it is different groups depending on who mounts the better campaign (the most money, usually) this time. This view of political process is becoming increasingly prevalent, at least in the West, and is behind a lot of the people involved in OWS type protests. Yes, there are ratbags and fools involved, but the same could be said of the Tea Party or any other political movement, it goes with the territory. But talking to people involved in Australia's version of this, most are like me, middle-class swinging (issue-based) voters who have become totally disenchanted with political bipartisanship and the greed and, let's face it, the cynicism of big business leaders who blithely alter the face of local employment by relocating off-shore bringing thousands of people into unemployment, and then rewarding themselves with obscene golden handshakes. Non-violent civil disobedience seems to me to be the only valid alternative, since the system is so loaded against new parties that a third voice in politics is rarely heard and even more rarely understood, given the Establishment bias of most major media. If we don't collectively wake up to ourselves politically, I suspect it is doubtful that Capitalism as we know it will outlast Communism by much more than a few decades. I wonder what will replace it? Lash