We Gotta Get Outta This Place

I think my father's death has driven home to me the callous nature of most of the political discussions that happen in social media. He was a loyal Democrat, who sometimes voted for a Republican or an Independent if he felt that was the right choice. Jill Stein is the only candidate that comes close to articulating my positions, but that doesn't mean I don't respect those who think today's realities mean one choice or another different from what I may make at the ballot box.

I do think we will only go further Right with every election, as we have every election of my adult life (if you look at the big picture and not the minor tacking maneuvers by one President or another) until we begin to build a political base rooted in the needs of the exponentially growing numbers of people being thrown out of the system.

No one has a step-by-step tactical plan for how to do that. The organization I'm most devoted to said a while back that any serious third party motion was going to emerge first from the right. I think we've seen that in the two parties that have torn away from the traditional Republican party--the Tea Party and the Trump Party. The Bernie Sanders/Jill Stein motions have yet to achieve a similar size or level of influence. More power to the Green Party as we move forward, but in the end, it's an ideological platform, and I think our unity is going to need to be more objective than that in the long run.

That said, I don't think any real challenge to the system will arrive until we recognize that a truly progressive party has to be antagonistic to the interests of Wall Street. That means the party has to be built around the unity of those who are suffering, not the crumbs tossed off by those who benefit from suffering. 

To get there, I'm afraid there are a lot of people who trash each other on Facebook and Twitter who are going to have to set aside their differences and begin to look at their objective common ground. We all need to get much better at listening and studying our environment without jumping and fighting to preserve our individual egos or shove our political clarity down someone else's throats.

Because....Those millions of people that piss us off because they're so wrongheaded? They see things you and I don't see, and we can learn from them. If we all approach this damn thing like we might learn something from each other, then we might be able to build something lasting.

Divided....as divided as I think we've ever been by a transparent and obvious and superficial mainstream media and then further divided by a ridiculously narcissistic social media that thinks shaming is a great building strategy....we are conquered.

Together, we could still change the world, and we need to if we're going to save it. Today's technology makes it easier than ever, but the existing polarized system will only allow us to use its tools for the greater good if we pry them from its cold, dead hands.

But that's only a system. Human beings are capable of building many different kinds of systems....to benefit our common humanity. That's what we need to be talking about or we're simply going to face worse fascism every four years until we have no more room to fight, or even breathe.

IMHO