Its the Platforms Stupid or Free the Sheep

So this friend of mine who still wears a scarlet D on his voter registration card invites me to a democratic party get together. He said I can check out the next Governor of Florida. I told him it would be a slow hurricane season in Florida before I go to a demtogether, unless there was something in it for me. I told him it was as insulting as if he was inviting me to a lynching or execution.

And I tell him how much I despise what the party stands for, and that it suckers good folks like him into voting for a multinational corporate war machine in disguise as a possibly reformable political party. So we argue a little. And I bring up the platforms. Well like a whole lot of democratic party activists I have worked with, he hadnt read his own parties platform. He didnt know what it was, and I tried to explain. I told him how his party published a manifesto of machismo while the Green Party Platform shines as blue print of all my wildest utopian dreams.

I had to stop talking to him at that point. He was a blinded follower and all the glowing idealism I could muster could not penetrate the goggles he was touting.

But I stewed on it. This is a decent guy from all I can tell. A wife, a couple kids. An Election Reform Activist. And yet a democrat.

So today I sent him an email with a link to the two platforms. I want to share it here to.

I was in Milwaukee at the Green National Convention in 2004, so I got to learn about how a party adopts a platform.

I also live in south Florida, where the dems had their platform meetings. I confess, I used that to my advantage. You see a bunch of friends I know supported Kucinich, and worse (Kerry and Dean). So I encouraged them all to embrace the party they were touting and go to the Dem's Platform shindig. They went. They went with idealism. They went carrying a vision of a peaceful nation headed by Kucinich. They came back with a bitter taste in their mouth. They came back after the dems shot down addressing an end to the war and Iraq. They came back after watching a their party draft a platform writeen in US and Iraqi Blood(and of course Afhanistan, columbia, palestine, etc...)

Many of them are now Greens.

I suspect the most dangerous thing I can do to keep the democratic war party from growing is to expose it for what it is. And they arent really even trying to hard to pretend to be a peoples party any more. "Strong at Home, Respected in the World" is a love song to capitilistic militarization of the world (i.e. fascism). It sounds almost like a WWF tournament. I love the upbeat start of the document featuring planks such as:

• Defeating Terrorism
• Keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists
• Strengthening our Military
• Strengthening Homeland Security

My personal favorite is Standing Up for the Great Middle Class. Well you bet it is a Great thing to be middle Class. But let me tell you one thing it aint so Great to be poor in this Strong at Home, Respected in the World Country. Because in this country, Dems will leave the poor starving on the side of a highway, just as quick as Republicans. Dems will beat the drums to send your children to war just as quick.

And their sheep will keep putting cute peace stickers on the car, and anticipate the day Hillary Clinton, Former Walmart Board Member, wife of man who passed NAFTA, Senator who is calling for tens of thousands more troops in Iraq, will be the first democratic Party Presidential Nominee.

Until the sheep find the platforms.


Free the sheep share these links everywhere.

FREE THE SHEEP!
Democratic War Party Platform
http://www.democrats.org/pdfs/2004platform.pdf

Green Party Platform
http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/