please don't hate to tell me anything, I'm always interested in other people's viewpoints and ideas.

These millions who have left these parties--what are they going to do? How are they going to influence politics? Again, the question is viability. If there is some way to make this people be the basis on which something other than the Republican-Democratic dichotomy (I almost said diarchy :-) could work, then let's hear it. For the time being, all you're saying is that they are meaningless.

You have quite a negative vision of the internal structure of the party, and how it works. Your experience was clearly different from Teresa's, judging by her posts and her plea for liberals and others to come to the meetings and help change the face of the party. Classes about how to change the party from the inside? Hell, go ask about that in the meeting. Go seek the others who think like that and make that obvious to the others inside the party.

Again, here's what you're saying: the alternative is to do nothing. Because getting out of the parties now, no matter how good you may feel about voting for the Greens or joining these millions of people who you say no longer care, is basically going to mean: doing nothing. Having no effect.

Please provide me with a viable alternative. Please tell me why doing nothing is going to be better than actually trying to go to Teresa's classes on how to compromise and try to turn them into classes on how to change the party from within.

My friend who doesn't believe in the distinction between the parties (he sounds like Yminale above) lives in Eugene, OR--I visited him a couple of months ago, he's disillusioned with American politics, thinks Obama is barely better than Bush but not enough for him to bother anymore, blah blah blah.

But I believe people are under the impression change takes place much more quickly than it does in actuality.

That is precisely the problem. So-called "pure heart" people who know what the right answers to the current issues are want these right answers to be effective immediately. They tend to think that those who don't agree with them are just spoil sports who aren't really representative of the future, or are under the influence of the Religious Rights and are thus dumbass nutjob radicals, etc. They don't see them as fellow Americans with different viewpoints who they have to live with because the idea of democracy is that the people who disagree with you must be protected from you. They don't see that this people have to be either convinced in sufficient numbers to make change possible, or then you have to wait for them to die and be replaced by more progressive-thinking younger people... or then, the usual fare of politics, that compromises have to be made. These three things imply that, as you said, change comes slowly.

Many liberals love the Swedish model. Do they think that the Swedes achieved it with some big revolution from some third party that suddenly got all right-thinking people behind them to 'end the oppression of Corporate Parties'? No--they got it by negotiating, and the changes came slowly but surely.

Bridges must be built slowly. Buildings must be built slowly. Or else you just don't think democracy is a good system anymore.

Who gives a crap what the world thinks.

Spoken like a true isolationist.

Obama is different. To the rest of the world, he looks like a moderate center-right politician. Bush looks like a religious nutjob who can't make a decision without opening the Bible for inspiration. The former is much better. Look at mickisue's post a couple of pages ago.

The Religious Right thought that but the GOP is more corporate than moral. In the end we only have one party, the Corporate Party.

Have you tried? It may be that you and people like you are actually not like the Religious Right, when it comes to influencing others.

I don't think the problem is a big Corporate Party. I think the problem is that the majority of the American electorate probably doesn't agree with your opinions (except for gun control). You have to change that. And that's a lot of work, especially if you don't want to use the infra-structure of an existing party.