Damek.

Bouldin at The Daily Gotham (an arguably left/progressive site) has put up an article on “The Greens in the two-party system” (main title “Worse than Worthless”). It provides a nice overview of how the two parties do manage to encompass a wide range of views, how the system works overall, and what role “third” parties play.

My own short experience with the Green Party a few years ago, and with American politics in general, has led me to share his view that it’s not lack of choice that is the problem in the system, but lack of a willingness to work with those who don’t match the perfect choice you’d like to have available. The “platform” of the Democratic Party, and the policies & strategies they pursue, are a product of all the actors involved. If some of the actors remove themselves, the product ends up not only representing only those actors left participating.

Now, I expect Greens would say (as I once did) that they stopped voting for Democrats because Democrats didn’t represent them. In effect, it’s a chicken-egg problem; it’s not the Greens leaving that made Dems move right, the Dems moving right made the Greens stop voting for them.

Even if this is true, it reflects a misunderstanding of how the system works, as Bouldin did a nice job of explaining. Excising yourself from the picture only makes things worse. It cannot make them better.

Now, sure, simply returning to voting for Democrats will make no difference. That only helps keep the status quo (well, it would have in 2000; it would be an improvement now). You have to participate in party discussions and activities and do some long, hard, dirty work to shift the gestalt Democratic Party platform your way. Now, not everyone has the time or energy to do this. Voting is all some some can do. But clearly somebody has the time and energy to organize and maintain the Green Part(ies), and if that were spent working within the party instead of against it, we’d be living in a much better world right now.

Kos writes about whining. I think it’s important to remember, and it’s applicable beyond the political realm, too. And it reminds me of thoughts I would have whenever classmates would complain to the teacher (or professor; this happened in college, too!): “I meant to do the homework, but…” or “I wanted to finish the paper today but…”

Actions don’t just speak louder than words, they’re more important. In many cases they’re all that matter. I still need to be reminded of it from time to time.

It’s also worth noting that, in many cases, we are incapable of action, or too busy with other action to handle more. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether whining or complaining is worth the bother in those cases. (Sure it’s more complex than this; sometimes words are a form of action, but that’s not whining, that’s acting.)