ON THE EVE OF THIS CRUCIAL ELECTION, MY FELLOW AMERICANS, THIS IS WHAT I WANT YOU MOST TO REMEMBER

Below is a letter I wrote to my aunt in reference to a letter I wrote to Professor Stephen Zunes.

Dear Nancy,

Below is a letter I wrote to Professor Stephen Zunes in relation to the Green Party. Since I know you have often supported Green Party politics in the past I wanted you to read my letter. I would like to remind you that loyalty to party is not what matters. What matters, is loyalty to set of ideas and values that can be impressed upon society if one chooses to work with others and unite in common solidarity for the sake of the common good by relaxing one's insistence of principle for only as long as is necessary to hold a voting bloc coalition together. Just prior to an election, unity is the key to helping foster and promote the principles one will stand upon after the election. You scratch my back and I will scratch yours. We help each other by uniting together so that later, after the election, we will listen to each other's ideas.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1104-27.htm
Dear Sir,

With all due respect, I often agree with you on a great many topics, but this time I must say that I do not agree with your article on Commondreams for the following argument that I would make:

The fault for going to war as is the fault for many of our corrupt policies is not the fault of the politicians, Democrat or Republican, it is the fault of the American people who prefer not to get involved and as a result power defaults to those who do get involved, namely the corporations. If the Greens were elected, after one election cycle, they would act much in the same manner as the Democrats act. This has been demonstrated in foreign countries where the Greens took power. Why? Because politicians respond to those who are involved and when the masses of people refuse involvement, power defaults to the corporations.

This article assumes that politicians are leaders and control the course of our future. Nothing could be further from the truth. Politicians are generally not leaders but followers and the failure of the politicians to legislate in ways that are good for the common good as opposed to the monopolistic elite is not a failure of their leadership but a failure of leadership by the masses to get involved and demand otherwise. We are where we are today because most people don't get involved nor vote nor do much of anything political and thus the political system defaults to those who do understand its power, the corporations. The people lead and politicians follow and since most of the time the corporations do most of the leading, that's where the politicians follow. The rot and decay of the American political system has little to do with the structural system and is mostly a result of the American people choosing not to get involved, period.

The Green Party will never become a majority party because most people vote Democratic or Republican reflexively. Therefore, the only viable means to change things is to reclaim the Democratic Party from the inside out. It will take years to accomplish but it has been done many times before, very successfully, and it must be done again. Place your hopes in third parties and we will become a fascist country or vice-versa because it is our disunity that strengthens the opposition whereas our greatest strength lies in our common solidarity. Together, we are strong. Pursuing a strategy of disunity is political suicide. Unity and solidarity must always take precedence over principle for the sake of the common good. Furthermore, by always promoting people to vote Green and acting as a spoiler for elections in which the Left of Center always loses because of the obstinancy and vindictiveness of the rigid Left, the center (where most Americans, in fact, reside) will become hateful of the spoilers on the rigid Left (Greens) who keep spoiling the elections for the Left-of-Center Democrats and as a result, the masses will choose to ignore the message being propagated by the rigid Left rather than migrate toward that position. In this all too real scenario, we all lose. The old addage, you scratch my back and I will scratch yours holds true most in politics. By helping the Left-of-Center Democrats win, the masses will be grateful and thus receptive to the ideas one imports into the process, thus over time, incorporating those ideas
into the common pursuit and common phraseology thus ultimately changing things over time as long as people stay involved.

The magic pill offered by simply voting Green and all your troubles will be solved is not a cure but a placebo. It's just plain wrong and illogical. One must choose to reclaim the system, stay involved, stay informed, remain engaged and above all, remain patient because change will come but it will not ever come overnight, it will take time, a long time and a lifetime of hard work. You must remain involved and engaged for the remainder of your entire life. Along the way, you will witness many changes worth fighting for.

There is no magic pill.

Only relentless, perpetual, consistent, perseverance of engagement and involvement and hard work will earn the change so desired. There is no magic pill but beleiving there is a magic pill is perhaps the most dangerous belief of all. In our system, you must get involved or default to being ruled by those who do get involved. To beleive that you can elect people who seem to represent your interests and then walk away and think that you no longer have to be involved is misguided and flatly mistaken and only invites the system to revert to its typical state, an invitation for the Greens to act like the Democrats have in the past. Once the masses get involved, the politicians will follow. I offer up the issue of Net Neutrality among other issues that have garnered wide public support like the resistance to the Iraq War which is now building in Congress due only to the people getting involved and staying engaged.

The reason things are so messed up is not the fault of the politicians, for they are followers not leaders, it is the fault of the American people who through their common apathy have defaulted from their responsibility to lead and build the kind of country they wish to live. At the very least, all they need to do is vote. They can do more if they wish to do more but voting is a basic responsibility of citizenship. I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the American people. There is no magic pill and there is no magic Party. There is only hard work, perseverance, staying informed and involved and a relentless pursuit of peace and justice that will save us.

Sincerely,

Eric Johansson