Among the political parties that are able to function in the totalitarian environment of the United States, I would rank the Green Party as number one.

In order to win, the Green Party will have to rely on the economic support of ordinary people who can barely afford to pay their rent, unlike the Democratic and Republican Parties funded by multinational banks who print up their own money. The Green Party cannot honestly take the money of working people unless it is committed, heart and soul, to the transformation of society.

Please allow me to suggest a few approaches that might make the Green Party central in American politics in a short period of time, probably in time to win the 2024 presidential election.

The Green Party as a democracy

First, the Green Party should be open and democratic in its internal administration if it wants to convince the citizens that it is serious about the democratic process.

I remember vividly my participation in Green Party events in Champaign, Illinois (2001-2004) and the manner in which the decisions made at the local level were not represented democratically in the party at the national level and how many topics were made taboo in the debates in a manner I can only describe as authoritarian.

There was literally nothing that I could do, or be a part of, in the Green Party other than attending discussions and listening to people; there was no way to organize, to make meaningful proposals that would be considered and implemented after a democratic process, or to advocate for strategies at the national level.  

If the Green Party transforms itself into a democratic institution, it can seize national political leadership in a manner that the Democratic and Republican Parties can never do because they are by their very nature dependent on multinational corporations that abhor deliberative democracy.

Theda Skocpol wrote a thoughtful book entitled “Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life” in which she describes how the participatory institutions in America have been killed off so that the citizen can no longer play a direct role in the NGOs, or the coalitions, and the political parties that supposedly represent their interests. If political parties do not allow local members to democratically determine policy, to advance ideas based on their merit and relevance, without concern for how much money they have in the bank, then we cannot expect state government or federal government to be democratic either.

That is to say that Green Party will succeed, not because it has money and can run TV commercials in swing states, but rather because the Green Party itself will become a model for democracy that will be emulated by cooperatives, local government, and eventually the federal government itself. As Gandhi advocated, we must “become the change we wish to see in the world.”

If the party does not include citizens at all levels of its administration, it can never lay the foundations for participatory civil movement capable of overwhelming the corporate parties in the streets, and among workers at Walmart and Amazon, by organizing the people in a fearless and visionary manner.

Embrace truth politics

As I watched the United States enter into a series of classified military agreements with allies that virtually guarantee an unstoppable drive for war with Russia, and then with China, over the last few months, and then I saw the preparations for the NATO Summit at Vilnius, Lithuania, planned for July 12, a meeting at which heads of state will sign off on a pile of military directives they have never read, I remembered the speeches delivered by the educator Rudolf Steiner in his lecture series, “The Karma of Untruthfulness.”

Steiner spoke out in 1917, as the nations of Europe tore each other apart precisely because of such secret military treaties that transferred the chain of command to an unaccountable military cabal--on both sides.

Steiner held that the previous decades during which establishment figures came to accept lies and deceptions as “the way things just are” was precisely what made that horrific war possible. Steiner wrote, “People do not feel a duty to pursue the actual truth, to seek truthfulness backed by facts—indeed, the very opposite mindset now rules the world, increasingly expanding its influence. External needs are always the consequence of what takes place in the minds of men.”
His point is as true today as it was then: playing stupid, accepting lies about the 9.11 incident, about the transfer of trillions of dollars to investment banks via quantitative easing, and about the assault on humanity under the COVID 19 operation is not a practical response, but rather a suicide pact.

Only a brave quest for absolute truth can save us from the current drive for world war.

The Green Party must follow the imperative of the African American author James Baldwin,
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Or, as Frederick Douglass put it, “People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.”

It will be the willingness of the Green Party to take on forbidden topics that puts it in the driver’s seat, not its willingness to conform with the absurd idea that lies must be embraced as a condition for political action. That horrific ideology has infected all of the political operatives in Washington.

Truth politics is not an option, but rather the only way to save the United States from war abroad, and from radical institutional collapse at home.  

Our culture is so smothered in denial, so fragmented by deep psychological trauma, that we must face the lies that have seized control of our country before we can hope to achieve anything of lasting value.

None of the candidates for president, or for any other office in the United States, have demanded that these crimes be investigated, that those responsible be arrested, or that the assets of those who planned these actions be seized.
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Our failure to address these crimes, and the gangrene that they have left behind in our political institutions, has created a more dangerous system of governance, one in which the push for nuclear can go forward without any opposition, or even debate—something that was not true before.

Do you remember how Senator Robert Byrd was allowed to speak out against the invasion of Iraq in 2002? Do you remember how Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul were able to draft articles of impeachment (House Resolution 1258) against George W. Bush in 2008?

Such actions are no longer possible precisely because we have been foolishly silent on the threat to government institutions posed by state crimes left festering. The situation will not get better.

Offer concrete benefits to working class people

The Green Party must offer something of real value to working people in return for their support and it must make membership in the Green Party something of profound significance for those brave enough and passionate enough to join the struggle to expand the party across the country rapidly in the face of massive opposition from corporate oligarchy.

In order for a political party to be successful, there must be a fundamental contract between the party and its supporters.

The Republican Party can count on strong support from multinational corporations, arms manufacturers, and billionaires because it promises, and it delivers, contracts with the Federal government worth billions of dollars, promotes endless war, and carries out a massive deregulation of the economy that allows the wealthy to consolidate their power.

The Democratic Party once relied on the support of unions and citizens of communities who faced oppression or discrimination for support. It returned that support by pushing for legislation with real teeth from the 1930s until the 1970s.

But the decay of institutions in the United States created a political wasteland wherein Bill Clinton was able to embrace the concept of “democracy for multinational corporations,” a radical reinvention of the Democratic Party. In this new political reality, he and his strategists abandoned the appeal to citizens at the local level for support and instead cozied up to IT firms, investment banks, and entertainment conglomerates who could deliver big money and who felt they were not getting the political access that oil companies and real estate speculators enjoyed with the Republican Party.

A real political competition between the parties resulted, but it was a brutal war between divergent corporate interests. Google was the victim of discrimination and oppression and it deserved to be granted the same welfare benefits as Lockheed Martin. The needs of ordinary workers dropped out of the equation.

In order to seduce intellectuals into accepting this scam, the salaries of administrators at universities and NGOs, at newspapers and TV stations, increased until they were many times the salaries of ordinary workers. It was a bribe given to those in authority who were collaborators in the corporate takeover of the entire country in the 1990s.

Thereafter, the Democratic Party focused on catchy items like abortion, ethnic identity, and the needs of an imagined “middle class.” These issues were treated using flashy advertising campaigns, while political operatives offstage dismantled the mechanisms by which citizens could have actual input in the formulation of policy within the party, or in government.

Policy was made up by consulting firms working for corporations who then fed it to the Democratic Party. The politicians started spending all their time raising the big money needed to sell pro-Democrat citizens this poisonous agenda through the commercial media, and other hidden persuaders in academia, and elsewhere.

The Democratic Party became the Trojan Horse offered to the progressives who wanted to save the remaining scraps of the New Deal, and the Republican Party became the Trojan Horse for those who stressed values and spiritual independence.

The fatal assumption of the Green Party, even today, is that somehow the Green Party will raise enough money from its supporters to compete with multinationals, somehow it will convince the corporate media to start covering the Green Party in the way that it covers cardboard messiahs like Donald Trump, and somehow, progressively, increase the impact of the party within the institutions of government and media that are now so hostile to workers.
If the Green Party cannot offer the working people who support it concrete benefits right now, and not just vague promises of a more just and equal society at some future date, it has zero chance of coming to power in a political system controlled by two political parties who actively block all efforts of third parties and independents to participate in the political debate.

The Congress offers a silly debate between harmless politicians for the entertainment of citizens which serves as a velvet glove to cover the steel fist of corporate power. The only solace offered to citizens is a narcissistic culture that focuses on personal needs rather than solidarity and that seduces us, dragging us deep into the cavern of identity politics from which there is no return.

If the corporate parties depend on money, the Green Party must depend on people, brave, unrelenting, motivated people who are ready to work together in communities, and across the nation, twenty-four hours a day. That means that the Green Party right does not need any money. It needs inspiring ideas, powerful speeches, effective community organizing, practical knowledge, accurate journalism, and, above all, tangible services for the community.

A single mother who has no job, but who is willing to work hard organizing the people on her block, building a committed local movement against corporate control that is economically independent, would be far more valuable for the Green Party than an upper-middle class lawyer who gives five thousand dollars a year to alleviate the guilt that he feels about his privileges.

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