“…[V]oting
is an instrumental act, not a domain for pronouncement of essential principles.
How one votes ought to be determined by factors at play in any given election,
including the political stakes surrounding each one… [C]alculations about what
to do in any election should include consideration of possible long-term as
well as short-term consequences of electoral outcomes…
“[T]he
overriding electoral objective now should be to maintain or expand political
space for organizing, and a Trump presidency and Republican Congress would
almost certainly undercut that objective in multiple ways, including
intensified attacks on the rights of workers and the political power of their
unions, on public goods and services, civil rights and liberties. That is, the
primary national electoral objective for this November has to be defeating
Trump. Period…
“Clinton
and Trump are both evil, but voting isn’t about determining who goes to Heaven
or choosing between good people and bad people. Indeed, that personalistic,
ultimately soap-operatic take on electoral politics is what set so many people
up to be suckered by Obama. (And does anyone really believe that a President
Trump, who routinely spews multiple, contradictory lies in a single compound
sentence, would actually block the Trans Pacific Partnership or retract the
imperialist war machine?)
“Often
enough, the ‘never Hillary’ stance is blinded by a demonization of Clinton that
frankly seems irrational. In fact, it is difficult to imagine that it is often
not at least tinted with sexism. From the standpoint of fealty to Wall Street
and corporate interests, or for that matter imperialist bloodlust, she’s no
worse than Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, or Bill Clinton. Some of that tendency
to demonize her reflects the high emotions generated during the campaign among
some of the Sanders faithful, as well as perhaps a reaction to having their
outsized dreams dashed.
“It
is understandable that in the high intensity of the campaign activists could be
swept up in exuberance about possibilities. But even though winning the
nomination and then the presidency was the primary objective all along, from
the very beginning it was a longshot because the deck was stacked against the
insurgent campaign. That’s what challenging entrenched power means. Making the
race as close as it became was an important victory, one that encourages
optimism about movement-building possibilities…
“To
the extent that for some people Bernie
v. Hillary became a Manichaean morality play, it simply repeated
the wrongheaded good guys/bad guys understanding of politics that has underlain
feckless left electoralism for more than a generation. And this points up an
important limitation of the critique of lesser evilism.
“There
is a significant difference between, on the one hand, making pragmatic choices
in given instances among a range of more or less undesirable options that are
available and, on the other, defining, as a matter of course, what we want only
in terms of what we think can get. The former is what we have to do in life
generally, across the board, as an artifact of living in a society in which we
as individuals cannot define the matrix of options solely to suit our
preferences or desires. The latter bespeaks a defeatist orientation, a politics
with no rudder and one that flies in the face of what it should mean to be a
left.
“Lesser
evilism, that is to say, is a structural problem not an individual one. It is a
pathology of opinion-shaping institutions—unions and others—that refrain from
attempting to intervene in shaping the matrix of options and the terms of
political debate. Only if one accepts, as many Greens do, a civics-text version
of democracy in which it is the actions of free-agent citizens that determine
the political agenda is it possible to assume that individual electoral
statements can have any impact on the drift of lesser evil politics…” (Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important by Adolph Reed Jr.).
Differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump:
ReplyDelete“What cannot be ignored is that Hillary Clinton has supported a war machine that has resulted in the death of millions, while also supporting a neoliberal economy that has produced massive amounts of suffering and created a mass incarceration state. Yet, all of that is forgotten as the mainstream press focuses on stories about Clinton's emails and the details of her electoral run for the presidency. It is crucial to note that Clinton hides her crimes in the discourse of freedom and appeals to democracy while Trump overtly disdains such a discourse. In the end, state and domestic violence saturate American society and the only time this fact gets noticed is when the beatings and murders of Black men are caught on camera and spread through social media…
“Much of the American public appears to have forgotten that totalitarian and white supremacist societies are too often legitimated by a supplicant mainstream media, cowardly politicians, right-wing and liberal pundits, academics and other cultural workers who either overlook or support the hateful bigotry of demagogues, such as Trump. What is also forgotten by many is the racist legacy of policies implemented by the Democratic Party that have resulted in a punitive culture of criminalization, incarceration and shooting of untold numbers of Black people.
“Rather than engage in the masochistic practice of supporting Trump's nativism, ignorance and bigotry, and his warlike fantasies of what it will take to make America great again, white workers who have been driven to despair by the ravaging policies of the financial elite and their shameless political and corporate allies should be in the streets protesting -- not only against what is called establishment politics, but also the rise of an unvarnished neo-Nazi demagogue…
“Does it matter that Trump supports violence with a wink of the eye and is unapologetic about his huge following of neo-Nazis who are enthusiastic about waging a war against Black and Brown people? How is it possible to forget that, overall, Trump is a demagogue, misogynist, racist and bigot who is unequivocally dangerous to the promises and ideals of a democracy? Apparently, it is possible. Yes, the fascists and Nazis were also efficient, particularly in the end when it came to building a war machine and committing acts of genocide. So much for pragmatism without a conscience..."--Henry A. Giroux.
“Trump is a real danger to the species, the country and the world in general. His views on war and climate change -- along with the promise of violence against his enemies and his unapologetic racism, bigotry and hatred of constitutional rights -- pose some of the greatest dangers to democracy and freedom the US has ever faced.
ReplyDelete“As Adam Gopnik says in an excellent article in The New Yorker, democracies do not simply commit suicide, they are killed by murderers, by people like Trump. Most expressions of support for Trump vastly underestimate the immediate danger Trump poses to the world and minorities of class, race and ethnicity. In contrast, while Hillary Clinton is a warmonger, a cheerleader for neoliberalism and a high-ranking member of the Democratic Party establishment, she is not threatening to take an immediate set of actions that would throw people of color, immigrants and working-class people under the bus.
“Instead, if she wins the election, she should be viewed as part of a corrupt financial and political system that should be overthrown. While posing danger on a number of economic, political and foreign fronts, Clinton would also expose by her actions and policies the mythological nature of the idea that democracy and capitalism are the same thing. Hopefully, all those young people who followed the dead-end of a Bernie Sanders movement -- and the false suggestion that a political revolution can be achieved by reforming the Democratic Party -- would seize on this contradiction. Sanders revitalized the discourse about inequality, injustice and the need to break down the financial monopolies, but he failed in choosing a political avenue in which such real and systemic change can come about..."--Henry A. Giroux.