Green Party's Lithuania Victory May Foreshadow A Similar Event In The US

Ballots being cast in this month's Lithuanian parliamentary election.

Chances are if you're reading this, you don't often follow Lithuanian politics. But if you do, you've recently seen something interesting take place: on Sunday the 9th, Lithuania's Peasants and Green Party, despite its candidates generally trailing in the polls, won 20 out of the 70 available parliamentary seats during that day's election.

Because several parties were competing with them (a common phenomenon in democracies other than the United States), this means that they've taken the most seats in Lithuania's parliament. And though they're still behind in the polls ahead of the second phase of the elections, which will take place on October 23, this could mean that they'll defy the odds again and take control of the country's government.

This comes as good news for the Lithuanian Greens' American counterparts.

Though I've only begun to look into the country that I'm talking about (oh, now I see it on the map...it's that one between Russia and Poland), I can report that there are striking similarities between the factors behind these election results and the situation in the United States.

Let's flash back to the Great Recession, which, for Lithuania, began in 2009. In response to it, the country's government, headed by the center-right Homeland Union Party, passed austerity measures that drove up poverty by raising taxes while at the same time cutting public services. Though to be fair, such actions were necessary at the time to save Lithuania from a debt crisis, their consequences for the poor and the middle-class were made apparent by how the Homeland Union was voted out of power in the 2012 elections because of growing populist sentiments.

But for many Lithuanian voters in 2016, the policies of the newly elected Social Democratic Party have not been enough as the recession's effects continue to be widely felt. And so two days ago, the Peasants and Green Party's promises of more radical reforms to the economy contrary to Social Democrats' center-left approach won over undecided voters and earned it a possible position as the new ruling party of Lithuania.

This story has a lot of parallels to what's happened in the U.S. since the start of the recession. After the 2008 financial crisis, which President Bush shared much of the blame for, Republicans were voted out in 2006 and 2008 because of this and other failures to protect peace, the environment, and the economy.

However, since then, Democrats have proven to not be much better, with the Obama Administration's efforts to revive the economy being insufficient, its health care bill failing to address the health care crisis, its trade deals hurting American workers and the environment, and its wars wasting enormous amounts of tax money. As a result, income inequality has continued to increase at about the same rate regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is president. Worst of all has been the unwillingness of both Republicans and Democrats to keep the financial sector under control, with their support of the Wall Street bailouts and their failure to break up the big banks having created the factors for another economic crash.

And just like in Lithuania, Americans are increasingly showing a commitment to overthrowing the neoliberal order that both of its most established parties represent. This is reflected in the campaign of Bernie Sanders, which, had it not been derailed by widespread voter suppression and electoral fraud, would have made it so that a self-described democratic socialist is well on his way to becoming the next U.S. president.

Because Sanders' run can be considered a last-ditch effort to reform the Democratic Party into something genuinely populist, the movement that it represented will most likely find a new home in the same place where Lithuania's leftist movement has: an alternative party which isn't tethered to corporate capitalism. Already, the Green Party of the U.S. is experiencing a major surge in support, with its 2016 presidential nominee Jill Stein (and also, perhaps, the dozens of other Greens running for the House and the Senate) on track to receive a lot more of the vote on November 8 than most polls estimate. And given the recent ideological fractures in America's party system, it's entirely possible that in the next several election cycles we'll see the rise of a third party that's capable of reforming America's economic system, which, by default, will likely be the Greens.

Sadly, the response to the worldwide trend in income inequality hasn't always taken such positive forms. Lithuania is unique in how it's one of the few democracies that has yet to see neo-fascist demagogues gain prominence in its government because of the economic hardships that its citizens are experiencing, with the neoliberal policies that so many countries have adopted in the last few decades producing a trend towards reactionary, far-right politics.

Right next to it in Poland, for example, representatives of such movements have gained control of the parliament, with their cracking down of civil liberties accompanying the nationalist culture that their presence has created. In the UK, June's Brexit vote may only be a foreshadowing of the victories that the country's burgeoning hard-right movements have the potential for winning in the next few years. And in the United States, though the current manifestation of this global movement Donald Trump is on his way to losing, four more years of the status-quo centrism that his opponent Hillary Clinton represents could very well result in the rise of something far more sinister in 2020.

These events resemble the vision of the future conjured by author Peter Moore who, after the 2008 financial crisis, wrote an account of what the future of global politics might look like if the current economic paradigm persisted. This paragraph, written in the context of some mentions of nationalist demagoguery being prevalent in the new political environment, indicates where he believes such trends would lead:

The new president might have better heeded his predecessor’s first, prudent steps toward silencing political opposition in time of national emergency. Instead, his glasnost-like policies met with that idea’s same ruinous results. A gesture of openness to the frivolous American media was only met with the usual anarchic outcries for still more information. Overtures of friendship toward leaders of the opposition faction in the Congress, such as Senators McConnell, Bond, and Cornyn, and Representatives Boehner and Hoekstra, were viewed as signs of weakness, and merely solicited further demands for power-sharing. It will seem strange today to many in Asia, or even in the “Failed World” of the West—where nation after nation has of late moved away from the constraints of the multiparty state—that such individuals were not summarily charged with high treason. But such were the logical endpoints of American-style “democracy.”

Of course, such a dark turn of events is anything but inevitable. The lowbrow appeal of Trumpism can be countered with the leftist radicalism offered by Sanders and the Greens, and if Americans build the Green Party into something viable by 2020-a task less daunting than it sounds-we'll easily be able to defeat the neo-fascists. For those in countries not dominated by two irredeemably corporatist parties, the necessary mission will be to make the already established leftist parties strong enough to fight the gathering political demons. But if these efforts fail, at least moving to Lithuania will still be an option.

Don't Bern Out

The movement that this site is based upon, despite of course being open to individuals of all political leanings, is largely being built (and was made possible) by former Bernie Sanders supporters. And as someone who is part of that group, I feel the need to give my fellow founders of the political revolution some advice.

Mainly, this message is directed towards a certain type of former Sanders supporter: the one who has, in essence, stopped supporting him.

All throughout the campaign, Sanders told us that change always takes place from the bottom up, that no president can ever achieve what the people can achieve when they recognize their own power. He even promoted a campaign slogan that reminded us of that fact-"not me, us."

But after the media, the DNC, and even the FBI worked to sabotage Sanders's chances of becoming the nominee, which gave him little choice but to give in, how his followers reacted would be the test of their character. If they accepted his decision despite not agreeing with it and moved on to continue his movement, they would pass.

And I fear that for the most part, they're failing that test. Far too much, I see Sanders supporters on social media expressing not just disappointment but bitterness for what happened, saying that their former leader "sold us out" and blaming him for supporting Hillary Clinton. I disagree as well with his choice to do so, and I'm also somewhat disappointed with how he largely did not address the election fraud that occurred, but I have enormous respect and gratitude for him nonetheless.

But the trait I witness in these types that I find the most disturbing is how now that many of them have moved on to the Green Party's Jill Stein, they're behaving exactly like they did during the primaries. They act as if she's the answer to every problem, and some of them believe that to such an extent that they've convinced themselves she has a serious chance to win.

I support Stein as well, but I have the realism to know that in the end, the votes she wins will help the Greens become successful in future elections, not somehow propel her to the presidency in this one. But the former Sanders supporters whose mindsets I'm respectfully calling into question just don't want to hear that. As one of my wiser colleagues Michael Sparks put what I'm talking about:

Today I'm seeing a lot of people in my feed saying that they are giving up on politics.
This is my greatest fear.
This is exactly what the establishment wants.
Bernie Sanders laid out an exact plan for us to win and spoke it to stadiums and backyards for 14 months.
Everyone screamed and went crazy, but I don't think very many were actually listening.
I think they heard...
"When I become President everything will be amazing!!"
When what he really said was...
"Not me, US!!"
"When millions of people stand together..."
and
"Change has always happened from the bottom up."
Bernie hasn't changed.
You have.
You were a poser revolutionary and now you expose yourself daily with your
"Bernie betrayed us" lies.
I can tell you were the ones who weren't listening.
They are now the ones who think that Jill Stein is going to be President and "everything will be amazing!!"
They are repeating the same pattern.
They aren't revolutionaries.
They are just looking for the next cult of personality.
They liked Bernie because he was a rock star and they like Jill for the same reasons.
When Bernie was cheated and told them that we could still win if we kept working, they turned on him and put Jill upon the same pedestal that they knocked Bernie off of.
On November 8, when Jill doesn't win a single state, these people will all cry about the rigged system and then quit politics with a bitter taste in their mouth.
They will be sitting on a bar stool twenty years from now complaining about how the whole world is a big setup.
They refuse to accept that change happens from the bottom up, because that is too much work.
These people aren't suited for the war of attrition that is politics.
Those of you who are intent on making actual change by overhauling your local government, I salute you.
You were the ones listening, in between the roars, in those crowded stadiums.

But soon, whether these people were listening or not, they'll no longer be able to afford to wallow in disappointment and refuse to be politically involved. Because for a while, they literally won't be able to afford many other luxuries.

Let's travel back to another moment when many were filled with the belief that one leader could fix everything: eight years ago. You remember that time, don't you? This amazing figure Barack Obama, who came into most of our lives only a year ago, had toppled the Clinton machine and was on his way to creating a new paradigm in human history. In his Democratic convention speech, his words felt like they spoke to us more than any others from a politician in recent memory: "America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this."

And Obama would soon have a very good opportunity to prove that he meant it. When much of America's banking system became undone in the month of September, President Bush, who's empty mind had been filled with banking industry propaganda during the past few months by his Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, proposed a bailout for the Wall Street firms. The way the administration first introduced the bill to the senate made it clear that all later claims of a bailout being necessary to save the economy were false; on September 18, Paulson told members of congress that should they fail to meet the bankers' extravagant demands, the entire world economy would crash "within 24 hours."

The plan was so clearly unreasonable that 95 House Democrats shot it down. But when Paulson rewrote it to seem like something that was simply meant to help homeowners, and presented it in a less suspicious manner, the House and the Senate were on board. Or at least those of them who's political careers depended on donations from the same banks that wanted them to pass the measure. On October 1, when the Senate vote was being negotiated, Obama, who's campaign's second largest contributor was Goldman Sachs, made the best case he could for it, one that was mostly based on the claim that there would be an independent oversight committee to make sure that the banks would pay back the money to taxpayers.

But even after Senator Bernie Sanders (someone you may have heard of) made a solid case against it, informing his colleagues that the committee was not independent at all but handpicked to make it likely to let the banks off, nobody listened. The Senate approved the so-called Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, and after the House did the same two days later, Bush listened to what the grown-ups had told him and signed it into law.

But unlike the president, Obama was aware of what would come from his support of the bill. And we knew it; our anointed savior had quite literally sold us out, redistributing $700 billion of the taxes we payed to the nation's top bankers so that they could make the banking industry into an unregulatable monopoly that controlled far too much of the nation's wealth.

And yet, instead of switching to the Green Party, we continued to assume that change would simply happen on its own and kept Obama, and his party, afloat for the next eight years.

And the consequences of our mistakes are about to hit us. Hard.

Had a party that isn't corrupted by corporate interests been voted into prominence since 2008, the damage of the bailouts would be undone by now. The banks would have been broken up, their executives would have been forced to pay their fair share in taxes, and the money that they had stolen from the middle class in 2008-and for the past four decades-would have been returned to its rightful owners. But the opposite has happened; in spite of Obama's Dodd-Frank Act, the economy is now more financialized than ever, with the big banks sharing about a fourth of the country's corporate profits.

This is a disaster in the making. The 2008 crisis was so bad partly because the banks had become so powerful after the Clinton deregulations that when they went down, the effect on the overall market was far bigger than it had been in previous downturns. But now the economy is stuck in a dangerous cycle of accelerated peaks, which are always followed by a massive collapse.

And we've recently passed the latest peak.

Since late July, the stock market has been experiencing its least active period in twenty years. This is the most dramatic result of the many factors behind it; housing and stock prices have reached about the same level as they did in early 2007. And according to monetary historian Mike Maloney, this means that a possibly unprecedented event is fast approaching. "This is the peak," he said on August 29. "We have passed the peak of the bubble. It's now deflating. There is usually a little tiny roll over and then a huge crash. And the little tiny roll over is just starting right now. We are seeing it first in the top end (like luxury real estate), where the currency that was created by the central banks went to that 0.1% first. Within the next few years you are going to see probably the greatest crash in history. I have often said that the crisis of 2008 was just a speed bump on the way to the main event. We are in the process right now of seeing this unwind."

And that's not the only part of our economy that's being run unsustainably. As a result of the drop in fossil fuel prices that's occurred in the past few years as a consequence of increased alternative energy use, much of the fossil fuel industry is soon expected to go bankrupt. This alone, says Prestige Economics president Jason Schenker, could very well cause a recession sometime in the next few months that surpasses the magnitude of the one in 2008.

And here we are, on the brink of catastrophe, arguing about the a presidential candidate who left the race more than a month ago. I'm sorry I didn't come to you with a piece that offered nothing but encouragement and hope for the future, but the dark prophecy I just exposed you to is necessary to precede such material.

When this crash hits-which, I believe, will start sometime very soon indeed-it will serve as a wake up call for most Americans. All of a sudden, people will be directly faced with the fact that there is something deeply wrong with the system. What will they do then? Will the types of former Bernie people I mentioned stop feeling beaten down by the system and step up to change it for themselves? Will the Hillary people and the middle-class part of the Republican electorate stop pretending that the system works and join the Bernie people in revolt? Will the Trump people stop blaming their economic problems on scapegoats like foreigners and Muslims and turn against the class of Trump himself, who are the real culprits?

Some of them will. But in the short term, at least, I suspect that not even an economic collapse cannot jolt many of these Americans out of their stubborn preconceptions about how to approach their country's problems. That does not mean, however, that those of us who will be awake during those times should give up. Me, Bernie Sanders, and the rest of them will be the only ones fighting the all-important battle against the new Wall Street bailouts that Obama and friends will be pursuing, and the neoliberal order that's behind all of it.

So I ask of the Sanders supporters who abandoned Bernie's cause to stew in their unnecessary feelings of hopelessness: snap out of it. We need you. And if you do the work that will be necessary in the coming months and years, you'll be rewarded with something perhaps even greater than a President Sanders or Stein: change on all levels.