It's a really tough decision and people on the left are talking about it and
wrestling with it. I watched a video in which Chris Hedges who, of course,
thinks as Carl does, said that what people on the Left should be doing, is
putting all of their energies into peaceful organizing toward a socialist
alternative. He went on to say that no one should expect to win any power
for such an alternative for at least ten years and that we might, in fact,
find ourselves caught in a right wing, fascist revolution. Listening to him
was like sitting in the doctor's office, being told that you need life
saving treatment, but that the treatment might kill you.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 9:16 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Miriam Vieni
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Return of Lesser Evilism
As far as I'm concerned, Lesser Evilism has never left us. I can't count
the number of times I've been told that if I fail to vote for candidate X,
then I am assuring that candidate Y will get elected.
And for many years I followed that advice. As a long time Democrat, I
worked to advance the Democratic Party Platform. But one fine day I awoke
to find that the Democratic Party had exchanged me for a pot of Wall Street
gold. It did not take the Democrat Party long to spin the Working Class
off, and begin to kiss the golden hem of their new friends, the folks who
could afford to pay the Democrat Party a most generous sum for their
support.
Forget the thrashings and bashing of the major candidates. Peek behind
their mouthings and silly antics and you will see the same commitment to
their benefactors.
So to pick between Clinton and Trump will gain you nothing because they do
not represent you or your needs. There is no, "Lesser of Two Evils" here.
Either one will find ways of serving the Empire's First Class Corporate
Citizens. But we do have a positive second choice.
We can vote, or write in our vote, for any of those candidates who advocate
a change of governmental systems. Any vote against the Establishment is a
positive vote.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/21/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Republican Here.
Taibbi writes: "The Democratic Party leaders have trained their
followers to perceive everything in terms of one single end-game
equation: If you don't support us, you're supporting
Bush/Rove/Cheney/Palin/Insert Evil Republican Here."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: AP)
The Return of Lesser Evilism
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
21 June 16
With Trump on the other side, Democrats can be lazier than ever this
election
Jonathan Chait of New York magazine wrote a column about Ralph Nader
this morning that uses some interesting language. Noting that it's now
been 16 years since Nader ran for president and garnered enough
dissenting votes to help elect George W. Bush, he wrote (emphasis mine):
"That is enough time for Nader to confess his role in enabling one of
the most disastrous presidencies in American history, or at least to
come up with a better explanation for his decision. Instead, Nader has
repeated his same litany of evasions, most recently in an interview
with Jeremy Hobson on WBUR, where he dismissed all criticisms of his
2000 campaign as 'fact deprived.'"
Nader refuses to confess! What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? Fetch
the comfy chair!
It would be foolish to argue that Nader's run in 2000 didn't enable
Bush's presidency. Though there were other factors, Nader's presence
on the ballot was surely a big one.
But the career Democrats of the Beltway and their buddies in the press
have turned the Nader episode into something very like the creation
story of the Third Way political movement. And like many religious
myths, it's gotten very tiresome.
The Democratic Party leaders have trained their followers to perceive
everything in terms of one single end-game equation: If you don't
support us, you're supporting Bush/Rove/Cheney/Palin/Insert Evil
That the monster of the moment, Donald Trump, is a lot more monstrousfor decades.
than usual will likely make this argument an even bigger part of the
Democratic Party platform going forward.
It's a sound formula for making ballot-box decisions, but the people
who push it never seem content to just use it to win elections.
They're continually trying to make an ethical argument out of it, to
prove people who defy The Equation are, whether they know it or not,
morally wrong and in league with the other side.
Beltway Democrats seem increasingly to believe that all people who
fall within a certain broad range of liberal-ish beliefs owe their
votes and their loyalty to the Democratic Party.
That's why, as a socially liberal person who probably likes trees and
wouldn't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, Nader's decision to take
votes from the party-blessed candidate Gore is viewed not as dissent,
but as a kind of treason.
The problem with this line of thinking is that there's no end to it.
If you think I owe you my vote because I recycle and enjoyed To Kill a
Mockingbird, you're not going to work very hard to keep it. That's
particularly true if the only standard you think you need to worry
about is not being worse than Donald Trump, which is almost the same
as no standard at all.
This is why the thinking within the Democratic Party has gotten so
flabby over the years. It increasingly seems to rejoice in its voters'
lack of real choices, and relies on a political formula that requires
little input from anyone outside the Beltway.
It's heavily financed by corporate money, and the overwhelming
majority of its voters would never cast a vote for the nut-bar
God-and-guns version of Republicanism that's been their sole opposition
So the party gets most of its funding without having to beg for ittaking that same money.
door to door, and it gets many of its votes by default. Except for
campaign-trail photo ops, mainstream Democrats barely need to leave
Washington to stay in business.
Still, the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Democrats have
come to believe they've earned their status, by being the only
plausible bulwark against the Republican menace.
This sounds believable because party officials and pundits like Chait
keep describing critics of the party as far-leftists and extremists,
whose platform couldn't win a national election.
Dissenting voices like this year's version of Nader, Bernie Sanders,
are inevitably pitched as quixotic egotists who don't have the guts to
do what it takes to win. They're described as just out for 15 minutes
of fame, and maybe a few plaudits from teenagers and hippies who'll
gush over their far-out idealism.
But that characterization isn't accurate. The primary difference
between the Nader/Sanders platform and the Gore/Clinton platform isn't
rooted in ideology at all, but money.
The former camp refuses to be funded by the Goldmans and Pfizers of
the world, while the latter camp embraces those donors. That's really
all this comes down to. There's nothing particularly radical about not
taking money from companies you think you might need to regulate
someday. And there's nothing particularly centrist or "realistic" about
When I think about the way the Democrats and their friends in theRepublican-enabler?
press keep telling me I owe them my vote, situations like the
following come to mind.
We're in another financial crisis. The CEOs of the ten biggest banks
in America, fresh from having wrecked the economy with the latest
harebrained bubble scheme, come to the Oval Office begging for a bailout.
In that moment, to whom is my future Democratic president going to listen:
those bankers or me?
It's not going to be me, that's for sure. Am I an egotist for being
annoyed by that? And how exactly should I take being told on top of
that that I still owe this party my vote, and that I should keep my
mouth shut about my irritation if I don't want to be called a
The collapse of the Republican Party and its takeover by the nativistFourth Reich.
Trump wing poses all sorts of problems, not the least of which being
the high likelihood that the Democrats will now get even lazier when
it comes to responding to their voters' interests. The crazier the
Republicans get, the more reflexive will be the arguments that we
can't afford any criticism of Democrats anymore, lest we invite in the
I didn't vote for Nader in 2000, and I don't have a problem withBernie Sanders.
anyone arguing this coming Election Day that we shouldn't all do
whatever we can to keep Donald Trump out of office.
What's problematic is the way Beltway media types are forever turning
postmortems on the candidacies of people like Nader or Sanders into
parables about the perils of voting your conscience, when what we're
really talking about is the party's unwillingness to untether itself
from easy money. This is how Chait sums up Nader (again, emphasis
mine):
"Nader goes on to defend his idiosyncratic belief that people are
under no obligation to consider real-world impacts in their voting
behavior. Vote for a third-party candidate, write in a candidate,
follow your own conscience:
'I think voters in a democracy should vote for anybody they want,
including write in or even themselves. I don't believe in any kind of
reprimand of voters who stray from the two-party tyranny.'
"Why should people vote for candidates at all? Since, by definition,
the person we most closely agree with is ourselves, why not just write
your own name in every time?"
Ugh. Hey, Jonathan: Voters don't want candidates who agree with them
about everything. They just want one who isn't going to completely
take them for granted. If that's become too much to ask, maybe there's
something wrong with the Democratic Party, not people like Ralph Nader or
Republican Here.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Bernie Sanders. (photo: AP)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ralph-nader-bernie-sanders-l
esser-
evilism-20160620http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ralph-nader-
bernie
-sanders-lesser-evilism-20160620
The Return of Lesser Evilism
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
21 June 16
With Trump on the other side, Democrats can be lazier than ever this
election onathan Chait of New York magazine wrote a column about
Ralph Nader this morning that uses some interesting language. Noting
that it's now been 16 years since Nader ran for president and garnered
enough dissenting votes to help elect George W. Bush, he wrote
(emphasis mine):
"That is enough time for Nader to confess his role in enabling one of
the most disastrous presidencies in American history, or at least to
come up with a better explanation for his decision. Instead, Nader has
repeated his same litany of evasions, most recently in an interview
with Jeremy Hobson on WBUR, where he dismissed all criticisms of his
2000 campaign as 'fact deprived.'"
Nader refuses to confess! What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? Fetch
the comfy chair!
It would be foolish to argue that Nader's run in 2000 didn't enable
Bush's presidency. Though there were other factors, Nader's presence
on the ballot was surely a big one.
But the career Democrats of the Beltway and their buddies in the press
have turned the Nader episode into something very like the creation
story of the Third Way political movement. And like many religious
myths, it's gotten very tiresome.
The Democratic Party leaders have trained their followers to perceive
everything in terms of one single end-game equation: If you don't
support us, you're supporting Bush/Rove/Cheney/Palin/Insert Evil
That the monster of the moment, Donald Trump, is a lot more monstrousfor decades.
than usual will likely make this argument an even bigger part of the
Democratic Party platform going forward.
It's a sound formula for making ballot-box decisions, but the people
who push it never seem content to just use it to win elections.
They're continually trying to make an ethical argument out of it, to
prove people who defy The Equation are, whether they know it or not,
morally wrong and in league with the other side.
Beltway Democrats seem increasingly to believe that all people who
fall within a certain broad range of liberal-ish beliefs owe their
votes and their loyalty to the Democratic Party.
That's why, as a socially liberal person who probably likes trees and
wouldn't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, Nader's decision to take
votes from the party-blessed candidate Gore is viewed not as dissent,
but as a kind of treason.
The problem with this line of thinking is that there's no end to it.
If you think I owe you my vote because I recycle and enjoyed To Kill a
Mockingbird, you're not going to work very hard to keep it. That's
particularly true if the only standard you think you need to worry
about is not being worse than Donald Trump, which is almost the same
as no standard at all.
This is why the thinking within the Democratic Party has gotten so
flabby over the years. It increasingly seems to rejoice in its voters'
lack of real choices, and relies on a political formula that requires
little input from anyone outside the Beltway.
It's heavily financed by corporate money, and the overwhelming
majority of its voters would never cast a vote for the nut-bar
God-and-guns version of Republicanism that's been their sole opposition
So the party gets most of its funding without having to beg for ittaking that same money.
door to door, and it gets many of its votes by default. Except for
campaign-trail photo ops, mainstream Democrats barely need to leave
Washington to stay in business.
Still, the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Democrats have
come to believe they've earned their status, by being the only
plausible bulwark against the Republican menace.
This sounds believable because party officials and pundits like Chait
keep describing critics of the party as far-leftists and extremists,
whose platform couldn't win a national election.
Dissenting voices like this year's version of Nader, Bernie Sanders,
are inevitably pitched as quixotic egotists who don't have the guts to
do what it takes to win. They're described as just out for 15 minutes
of fame, and maybe a few plaudits from teenagers and hippies who'll
gush over their far-out idealism.
But that characterization isn't accurate. The primary difference
between the Nader/Sanders platform and the Gore/Clinton platform isn't
rooted in ideology at all, but money.
The former camp refuses to be funded by the Goldmans and Pfizers of
the world, while the latter camp embraces those donors. That's really
all this comes down to. There's nothing particularly radical about not
taking money from companies you think you might need to regulate
someday. And there's nothing particularly centrist or "realistic" about
When I think about the way the Democrats and their friends in theRepublican-enabler?
press keep telling me I owe them my vote, situations like the
following come to mind.
We're in another financial crisis. The CEOs of the ten biggest banks
in America, fresh from having wrecked the economy with the latest
harebrained bubble scheme, come to the Oval Office begging for a bailout.
In that moment, to whom is my future Democratic president going to listen:
those bankers or me?
It's not going to be me, that's for sure. Am I an egotist for being
annoyed by that? And how exactly should I take being told on top of
that that I still owe this party my vote, and that I should keep my
mouth shut about my irritation if I don't want to be called a
The collapse of the Republican Party and its takeover by the nativistFourth Reich.
Trump wing poses all sorts of problems, not the least of which being
the high likelihood that the Democrats will now get even lazier when
it comes to responding to their voters' interests. The crazier the
Republicans get, the more reflexive will be the arguments that we
can't afford any criticism of Democrats anymore, lest we invite in the
I didn't vote for Nader in 2000, and I don't have a problem withBernie Sanders.
anyone arguing this coming Election Day that we shouldn't all do
whatever we can to keep Donald Trump out of office.
What's problematic is the way Beltway media types are forever turning
postmortems on the candidacies of people like Nader or Sanders into
parables about the perils of voting your conscience, when what we're
really talking about is the party's unwillingness to untether itself
from easy money. This is how Chait sums up Nader (again, emphasis
mine):
"Nader goes on to defend his idiosyncratic belief that people are
under no obligation to consider real-world impacts in their voting
behavior. Vote for a third-party candidate, write in a candidate,
follow your own conscience:
'I think voters in a democracy should vote for anybody they want,
including write in or even themselves. I don't believe in any kind of
reprimand of voters who stray from the two-party tyranny.'
"Why should people vote for candidates at all? Since, by definition,
the person we most closely agree with is ourselves, why not just write
your own name in every time?"
Ugh. Hey, Jonathan: Voters don't want candidates who agree with them
about everything. They just want one who isn't going to completely
take them for granted. If that's become too much to ask, maybe there's
something wrong with the Democratic Party, not people like Ralph Nader or
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize