Ralph Nader starting up with his "both parties are the same" B.S. again

[tama]

51. Thank you for serious answer

I live in country with multiparty system, and the end result is not that different from yours. Constant drift to the right of all parties and the party political system as whole. The problem is the inherently corrupt and corruptive nature of the representative system, the problem is systemic.

Politics is not limited to party politics. Grass root movements, unions etc. not affiliated with any political party are full of of good organizers doing the hard stuff, the leg work, talking the talk and walking the walk. Without trying to sway any voters in any way. Occupy is just one example.

I feel that the participation in and experience of authentic democracy in citizens assemblies is much more important than the ritual of voting once in four years. Especially if we want to solve our common problems in peaceful and democratic way, respectful of all members of our communities.

Iceland had a revolution by grass roots social movement and new crowd sourced constitution. They kicked out the old guard as whole but didn't abandon representative system as whole - but they amended the system lot towards participatory democracy. The part of the social movement that decided to take part in the partisan game took careful steps not to get corrupted by the representative system, e.g. promising to disband the party after certain amount of time or if all the goals have been achieved before that. To keep political party just a tool of people, not corrupt power hungry entity over people.

We can and do learn, we are NOT doomed to keep on repeating mistakes and tactics that lead to nothing but more misery, we are not doomed into banging our heads into wall for eternity and complaining our defeat.

This for me is the real message of hope. If people of Iceland can do it, so can we. We have hope.