If the Greens and the Libertarians Joined Forces, They Could Win
The public sees the grim "choice" of Trump and Biden. Like dwarves and elves, people could join together and defeat the corrupt warmongering duopoly.
The CNN “debate” last night featuring Trump and Biden helped highlight their collective and individual derangement.
There may be a historic chance for a “third party” to win the White House and revolutionize politics, breaking the grip of the duopoly.
Perhaps not “a” third party — perhaps two.
The Green Party and Libertarian Party share a good many positions in opposition to the Trump-Biden establishment duopoly.
Peace: Ending the US’s militarism and its support for carnage like Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Be a Democracy, not an Empire: Close hundreds of US bases around the world, bring the troops home.
Pro Civil Liberties: Ending government surveillance like the “Patriot Act”
Pro First Amendment: Anti big government and big tech colluding and dominating the town square
Anti corporate rule
Main Street over Wall Street
No more bailouts, corporate subsidies
End government secrecy: If they were to gain the White House and therefore the entire executive branch, making public government documents on many issues — exposing criminality — could upend the establishment permanently.
There are certainly some differences between them, but some of these may be addressed by looking beyond the surface. For example, on immigration. Both largely agree on issues that lead to desperate immigration: drug policy, anti-intervention, anti corrupt corporate trade deals. If the root causes are addressed, the symptoms will recede. (Green Party candidate Jill Stein alluded to this dynamic regarding immigration in her livestream last night.)
There are huge issues that are rarely discussed that they would almost certainly agree on: Stopping the funding of creating deadly pathogens (euphemistically called “gain of function” lab work). Rand Paul has done some good work on this. People on the left should take note. Stopping such work would dramatically reduce the possibility of outbreaks like Covid, which cause so much damage.
Some things are focused on by one and rarely addressed by the other. Libertarians talk quite a bit about the corrupt power of the Federal Reserve. Greens could fairly easily support efforts to reform or abolish the Fed.
I’m not asking Greens and Libertarians to give up who they are. Some compromise may be worked out, some disagreements will remain.
I’m asking them to consider joining forces for a time to accomplish a great task: Gain the White House, accomplish all they agree on and destroy the corrupt duopoly. Then they can go their separate ways, though the experience will transform them as well as the wider world.
This is akin to Dwarves and Elves joining together to confront the threat Mordor poses to everyone.
Some of this is outlined in Ralph Nader’s book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.
Strands of this are outlined in my VotePact.org project, which advocates people pairing up and syphoning votes in twos, one from Biden and one from Trump so that people are freed up to vote their actual preference. An alternative would be for Jill Stein to clearly articulate some positions associated with the right but totally consistent with the left: Ending dangerous lab work. Going after the Fed.
The duopoly has jointly ruled for decades. It has gotten worse and worse as a result. The only thing holding it together is how bad one group of voters view the other part.
Now, we could have a majority of people see how rotten the whole thing is.
This may be a historic opportunity for those seeking meaningful positive change. You could end up with the Greens and Libertarians debating and getting 2 percent or so apiece. Yet again.
Or we could do something different.
They could join together. Start a cascade effect of people joining together.
And spark mass democratic participation like the US has never before seen.
See my piece on the 2022 farce:
Totally agree with you. I’m voting for Jill Stein.
There is no better candidate for the greens and libertarians to rally around than US Rep. from Kentucky Thomas Massie, a sane MIT-trained engineer who built his family's off-the-grid house himself. Married his high-school sweetheart who is also a MIT engineer. Massie is Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson rolled into one. If our country survives another four years, he's the one. I may even write him in this year.