Ok. So. If Bernie Sanders were to run on the Independent Party ticket, he would not win, this time around. BUT, a seed planted long ago in the Grassroots movement for the Independent Party but not tended to and water would begin to bloom -- people would realize its need for cultivation, and as is the way with humans who are waking up, a collective watering would occur. And with this water, as with all things that begin, something will grow. Slowly at first, and as the collective awakening of this planet occurs, the Independent Party would start to show signs of actual life. Actual life in that something might happen with it. And with that, the dismantling we've all imagined might start to occur. Real. Change. A dismantling to the system that we so need to break down if forward movement will ever occur.
A social activist friend of mine who has spent years studying systems of power has a feeling that Bernie Sanders is simply aiming for Secretary of State or a similar, lateral position of that sort. Perhaps Bernie does believe he can win Presidency. Perhaps he believes he can't. But the thing is, if he wins on the Democratic Party ticket, the wheel just continues to rotate back and forth, back and forth.
This message of the wheel is of the exact same sentiment that is so powerfully portrayed in Khaleesi's chill-inducing statement from Game of Thrones, Season Five: "I'm not going to stop the wheel. I'm going to break the wheel." I have no doubt that this is a direct message to our current society in a shifting paradigm. Breaking the wheel is the only way for the beginning of an actual breakdown -- a systemic breakdown -- to occur. The two-party system, as anyone who is paying even the slightest bit of attention knows, is just a game. Back and forth -- families buying elections. One party in power and the *other* party stopping "them" from achieving any real change, then the other in power and the same thing happens. We're tricked into believing we're making actual headway with the women's right to vote (first Caucasian/White women, then Native American women, then Asian American women, then African-American women), then the Civil Rights Movement ... on into legalizing marijuana in certain states and now marriage equality. These are all HUMAN RIGHTS. No one should have the ability to make them or take them away. The government spoon feeds us what we want years after we've hungered for it so much that we're almost numb with starvation, and then finally dumps whatever it is this time around in our starved mouths so that we rejoice and celebrate this so-called "victory" like it's actually been won. Like we didn't deserve to EAT, but now we are getting to so we should be thankful. The thing is, we won all this stuff a long time ago. We won it through our very existence. It's just been taken away from us. And the rate at which these human rights are being returned to us -- this pace at which we're allotted our fill is too slow, yet we celebrate these "victories" like they're something. Like we're actually winning, as if it's a game that can be won. This is the thing: it's always two steps forward, one step back; one step forward, two steps back. "Progress" moves at the rate that the wheel does, and since it's a wheel, with the same two parties rotating it back and forth, there is no actual effective movement at any sort of pace that is necessary. An Independent Party movement would change all of this.
Yes, the Independent Party splits the Democratic vote. But even if a Republican did win the election, perhaps things would have to get that bad for more people to wake up and build on the Independent Party movement. Perhaps things have to get even darker for there to be a real shift to occur. This is how it works, right? Fuck the truth of this because that shit is painful, but if there's going to be a collective movement forward, things need to get dark. Because it's only then that people move towards the torches others have lit, and then light their own with the fire that burns there ... maybe even berns.
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Oh, and one other thing: Nothing changes if you check out. You might get to live a quiet life on a farm somewhere, or go eat a bunch of drugs at festivals and shows year after year and pretend the outside world doesn't exist, or go to your 9-5 and acquiesce to the rat race until you're burned out and wondering where your whole life went, but what's the point in that if there's no future for your family, your friends, your relations, the plants and animals around us ... and if you want to get really far out, no future for you in a future life (if you can get down with the reincarnation/regeneration thing)?
The point is, you can't check out. You're making a difference regardless of what you do -- you're either harming or healing. That's the way it is right now -- you signed up for it by being alive.
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