Saving the United States

I would like to remind the American people of something that seems to have been completely forgotten: the power of the human being. The power that we have to mobilize ourselves and others in order to throw out the system that has abused our people and raped our environment from the beginning of our country's creation.

Every four years, our countless number of left-wing organizations come together in order to back the Democratic candidate for the American presidency. Wait. Stop there.

Rather than discussing the obscene amounts of money, human labour and other resources that go into attempting to elect a Democrat into the White House, I'd like to point out the most basic and astoundingly obvious flaw of the American left. Election after election, we mobilize ourselves to support the enemy. We volunteer for, give money to and radically vocalize our support for a compromise, not a solution. Former Swedish politician Olof Palme used the term 'pest eller cholera' (the plague or cholera) to describe the situation that the free world is placed into with their national elections. Voting in the lesser of two evils. Choose which disease you would rather have spreading itself across our nation. Compromising our own political ideals and above all sacrificing our own human dignity and our system of democracy to make sure that the cholera wins over the plague. Why would we want either illness?

Why do we accept failure after failure from the Democratic party? Why do we think that we live in a two-party system when that couldn't be further from the truth? As Americans, we have the power to change not only the course of our country, but we have to power to change the course of the world. We have the power to put an end to environmental destruction. We have the power to put an end to world hunger. Politically, we live in the most powerful country in the world. Isn't it time to start stepping up to the plate and taking our social responsibility a bit more seriously?

The Green Party, The Socialist Party USA, The Democratic Socialists...these are just a few of many political organizations that make up a very, very large chunk of America's left. These parties have better solutions, policies of more humanitarian value and have an overall better understanding of humanity and working class issues than the Democrats could ever dream of having. So why don't we spend our time, money and energy into electing a third party to office? Why do we tell ourselves that it's impossible to elect a third party? Ralph Nader showed us that a small party can make a major wave by mobilizing only a tiny fraction of the US population. Would they have won with the support of organizations such as Moveon.org, the Working Families Party and the Democratic socialists of America? I believe they would have had a good shot.

Without our money and labour, it is impossible for the Democratic Party to succeed. Why, then, do we let them? Why do we give them our voices in exchange for anti-human, neo-liberal politics that are destined for failure?

It's a bit late to start working on the 2008 elections, as it will take an enormous nation-wide education campaign in order to secure the support of the more impoverished and uneducated areas of the United States. However, it's not too late (or too early) to start working on the 2012 elections, and I say we had better get started.

We're trapped in a two-party system because we want to be. We're enslaved because we've given our government and media institutions the chains to tie us up with from our own sheds. It's time to fight back and it's time that we show our country and the rest of the world that we haven't forgotten what it really means to live in a democratic society.