Apologies for the Delay

Hello, Daniel here, and I apologize for the delay.  Watching the Olympics, taking all the beautiful No Man's Sky pictures as well as preparing for my grad school program in September seems to have drained quite a bit of time from me.  Neverthless, this sociopolitical blog is still on, I am not quitting my bloggers' chair any time soon, and will have my next article up as soon as possible.

But first, a quick note on the Green Party Town Hall that occured yesterday.  I was more excited for the Green Party town hall to say the least then any of the upcoming Hillary vs. Trump debates.  As I feel the 2016 election will not be a progressive campaign pitted against a alt-right one, but a business-as-usual neoliberal establishment campaign pitted against an alt-right one.  Despite Bernie's efforts to inject left wing discourse into American politics, it seems that politics remains wedded to the notion of lesser of two evils.  And Hillary looks to be shaping up to be business as usual, seemingly abandoning the most progressive democratic platform in history.  The Green Party Town Hall with Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka is thus a refershing alternative to dead-end politics where voters have to pick between the maintaining of neoliberal policies or give way to the far-right and the dangers it might entail.  The dominance of the political duopoly is even more jarring considering a large percentage of young people want a third party to represent them.



Overall, I feel that the town hall in itself was very informative.  Stein and Baraka handled themselves quite well I feel in the face of a media apathetic or hostile to third party challenges.  I especially liked much of their positions on student debt, as well as their plans to deescalate racial tensions in the US in the wake of the Black Lives matter protests.  Stein even used this Town Hall to clarify her position on vaccines, which has been used by the media to supposedly paint her as anti-science.  Instead, she says her attitude torwards vaccines is overblown, but that vaccines have to be regulated by various parties without corporate interest in them, the opposite of which is going on in the US with CEOs on board of regulatory agencies.

It was also good that the party established themselves as the progressive next step for disillusioned Bernie supporters.  Stein hoped that with the democrats sabotaging of Bernie's campaign being exposed for his supporters, they will continue their revolution within a "revolutionary" party over a "counter-revolutionary" party that sabotaged the Sanders' campaign at every step and prevented his political revolution from fermenting.  Baraka, being more critical of Sanders points out that the former Bernie supporters' next steps, if they want to develop their movement beyond the man that spawned it, must tie their critiques of domestic economic policy and their push for greater social justice with a critique of American militarism and how it may negatively impact progressive and democratically socialist domestic policies, which he believes Bernie has not done, citing his preceived lenience torwards Saudi Arabia as a US ally and Sanders' support for the Drone Program, both critiques being lost under the praise. 

Overall, I feel Stein and Baraka laid out the policies of the Green Party quite well and enjoyed the event.  Yet, in a way this was also frustrating, not only because of how the media and the two party system are arranged against third parties, but how everything related about third parties is not how only third parties present real issues that the other two parties, but how they could influence the election for either of the two parties. This discourse of framing third parties solely on the lens of the duoply was seen in many of the comments in the streams for the Green Party Town Hall.  We have both the alt-right and Hillary supporters both trolling Stein supporters and of course fighting amount themselves as well as talking about how their candidates are supposedly "the best" for America despite all evidence to the contrary. This demonstrates how two-party discourse and the notion that there can only be two parties in existence has negatively influenced Americans to not debate the merits of third parties or even their policies, but only how they get in the way of their chosen democrat or republican candidate.

What is made worse because of this toxic discourse is that no one would want to support a third party and vote their conscience.  People would only argue in terms of "should I vote Stein if it would benefit Trump because of what happened to Nader in 2000"(note: I feel Nader did not ruin Gore in any way shape or form and pave the way for Bush).  This in turn perpertuates a cycle where they do not vote for progressive alternatives or get engaged in grassroots campaigns electing them to local levels.

Some defenders of the two-party system such as Dan Savage say that the Greens "don't care" about local electoral processes but only place their faith on electoral miracles. However this argument ignores why there are no local campaigns or how local initiatives are treated by states.  A lot of states, according to Bruce Dixon of the Green Party apparently wont let third parties run for local office or counties unless they have a certain amount of ballot access, a certain amount of funding or a certain percentage in the federal election(around 2-3%). 

Thus, third parties wanting to make a electoral breakthrough is because they want to get the acceptance to run local grassroots movements and campaigns. Its less about putting some faith in miracles and more about seeking validation.  And its not like the Greens want to get 20% or even 10%, they just want a small 2-5% that would give them attention and with that validication, even if it is bad media coverage(very likely) so they can be allowed to run at local levels.   Overall, it is just sad that discourse around the American political system do not frame third parties as important, but just irrevelent forces that only benefits one or the other mainstream party by splitting the vote.

With that said, I apologize for the absence and I hope to resume writing as soon as possible.