Ten Things That Are More Selfish, Stupid And Privileged Than Voting Green Party

Caitlin Johnstone
4 min readAug 8, 2018

“Green Party” is trending on Twitter right now, which always means that Democrats are having a meltdown over something that is entirely their own fault. Apparently a few people voted Green in a close congressional election in Ohio with low turnout due to uninteresting and uninspiring candidates, which according to Hollywood celebrities like Alyssa Milano and Kathy Griffin is proof of the Green party’s selfishness, stupidity, hypocrisy, privilege, and, of course, proof of a secret Russian conspiracy.

Never mind the fact that a small number of people have always voted Green when there’s an opportunity to. Never mind the fact that the Green votes didn’t even affect the outcome of the election. Never mind how everyone knows on some level that the Democrats are a novelty joke party which doesn’t even have real primaries and only serves to corral progressives into supporting plutocratic agendas instead of moving America to the left in any meaningful way. The important thing is herpa derpa Jill Stein Susan Sarandon, derp duh.

Well I can think of a few things off the top of my head that are a lot more selfish, stupid, hypocritical and privileged than voting for a Green Party candidate when that seems like the right thing to do. Here are ten of them:

1. Continuing to support an ecocidal, omnicidal two-headed one-party system which has used narrative control and good cop/bad cop schtick to march our species to the brink of extinction via climate chaos or nuclear armageddon. Just so you can feel good about yourself for doing what the TV told you to do.

2. Continuing to support the Democratic Party, which destroyed Libya in a fake “humanitarian” intervention based on lies, indifferently leaving behind a smoldering crater of humanitarian catastrophe where terrorist factions run rampant, rape is everywhere, and humans are sold as property.

3. Continuing to support a political system which is wholly owned and operated by the wealthy, leaving zero effective influence over US policy in the hands of ordinary Americans and immense influence in the hands of the very rich.

4. Continuing to support the Democratic Party, which does everything it can under the pretense of slow, incremental change to hamstring meaningful environmental reform anywhere remotely near the scale necessary to avert a climate catastrophe that would impact the world’s most disadvantaged and impoverished people first and worst.

5. Continuing to support the Democratic Party, which does everything it can to prevent progressive reform and the implementation of the same social safety nets accorded to every citizen of every other major country on earth, first and foremost to the detriment of America’s most disadvantaged groups.

6. Continuing to support a mass media network which consistently deceives the American people into consenting to oppressive neoliberal exploitation at home and bloodthirsty neoconservative warmongering abroad, both of which impact the most impoverished and disadvantaged groups far more than anyone else.

7. Continuing to support the Democratic Party, which has worked in conjunction with the Republican Party to advance dangerous new cold war escalations which have been planned by neoconservatives and secretive government agencies for many years.

8. Continuing to support the Democratic establishment, which, while condemning Trump’s criticisms of the “free press”, actively cheerleads Trump’s agenda to imprison Julian Assange, a move which would set a precedent allowing Trump and his successors to imprison journalists for publishing government leaks.

9. Supporting the party which could very, very easily attack Trump on the basis of his reckless warmongering, suicidal escalations against Russia, and greatly increased civilian casualties in bombing campaigns, but instead attacks him for not being hawkish enough.

10. Supporting the party which, in order to attack Trump, has been rallying to support J Edgar Hoover’s fascist, minority-oppressing FBI and the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering CIA.

It’s easy to advocate incrementalism when you’re not living hand to mouth. It’s selfish to think that acting on climate change can be rolled out over many decades so as not to upset the corporate donors of your favorite politicians. It’s the height of entitlement to close the door to progressives inside the Democratic Party, and then throw a hissy fit when they vote for another party. It’s hypocritical to hyperventilate about election-rigging Russians while secretly, and then openly, rigging primaries against progressives.

Supporting the continued existence of a fake two-party system which advances exploitative agendas hurts the most vulnerable populations in America and in the entire world. Acting self-righteous because you actively support that system while spitting on the people who are trying to change it is selfish, is stupid, is hypocritical, and is a mark of extreme privilege.

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