2020 election — Paul Edward's argument against choosing lesser evils

16 October 2020

Today, I address both where we are . . .

. . . and how Hope is an ineffectually indulged emotion, under these circumstances.

We get nowhere by failing to recognize the solidity of the bars that enslave us.

Setting today's stage

After four years of complaining Trump is an old, white, draft-dodging man linked to corruption, the best the Dem [meaning Democratic Party] process could cough up was an even older, white, draft-dodging man linked to corruption.

This unseemly election contest . . .

. . . (between two morally and intellectually reprehensible candidates) raises the "lesser evil" voting question that so perennially plagues American politics.

Noam Chomsky is a proponent of making such choices. He picks Joe Biden as the less traumatic presidential selection in 2020. Chomsky's (not unpersuasive) logic is that, by eventually massing protest, a Biden Administration can be pushed into taking more progressive directions. In contrast, voting for Trump — or voting for a third party that causes Biden to lose to Trump — would be existentially disastrous in the immediate future.

Opposing Chomsky are others, who think that 2020 is merely a contest between variously costumed Satans. Both spawned by the self-serving American Oligarchy.

This latter group includes the seminary-trained, war journalist Chris Hedges. Hedges recently pointed out (indirectly) that morality has personal bite. Legitimate soul has to battle directly with evil. When one has witnessed terminal suffering, one does not choose devils in any form:

The whole mess that we're in was a bipartisan effort and Biden was complicit.

Hedges supports the above observation with accurate statements about the American political parties' intentionally shared destruction of his (Maine) working class roots, as well as those same parties' eager participation in destroying Palestinians.

As for hope

Paul Edwards addressed the Hope topic this way:

A century ago, battling the monstrous power of rampant Capitalism, Emma Goldman said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”

She saw that the core purpose of “democratic” government had nothing to do with improving the lot of its people, and everything to do with maximizing profit for the Capitalist juggernaut. No country on earth has greater government/Capitalism symbiosis than America.

Most Americans, after life-long indoctrination, can’t believe they have been deceived about their government, by their government. A short exercise can address that inability.

Try to recall the last legislation that socio-economically benefited the American people at large.

Stumped?

That might be because it was before you were born. Two bills have passed that were indisputably for the public good: Social Security, in 1935 under FDR, which also provided for unemployment and aid to mothers with dependent children; and Medicare/Medicaid, under LBJ in 1965.

That’s it.

There has been, in 55 years—the better part of a normal lifetime—no legislation to significantly socially and economically benefit 300 million ordinary American people. None.

When you live in a false, rotten Capitalist “democracy” in which there is no hope of reform; when the same vile crimes and depredations will continue at home and abroad under either contemptible phony; when nothing of value to people or the world is even considered by either dead soul, then engaging in fine gradations of imposed evils is a lunatic’s exercise.

Emma got it. We keep hoping for a different result.

As Edwards hints

The problem is how little people learn in life. Most of us are either voluntarily blind or very slow learners. And the State of Youth is arrogant enough not to listen to its elders, even if some of those have actually learned something True.

In virtually all cases, anyway, Americans know almost no history. We meander in a fog of wiped memory.

These traits make it highly unlikely that the US Public will escape the propagandized State of Delusion that is continually foisted on us by both of our plutocratically oriented political parties.

The moral? — Being distractedly hopeful, under these circumstances, is arguably suicidal

Better to act with emotionally stripped pointedness.

That said, effectively directed "stripped pointedness" still requires recognizing where one is, who put us there and how they did it.

Do we?

PeteFree.com

2020 election — Paul Edward's argument against choosing lesser evils