So the "left", at least that part of the left that is participating in or paying attention to the governance of this country, is having a squabble about lesser evil voting. Specifically about voting for Clinton over Trump.
Which brings up an observation/question. What about the nearly fifty percent of voting eligible Americans that do not vote? Wouldn't a significant percentage of them, probably more than half, actually be of the left?
Over at Counterpunch they're having a little thing about lesser evil voting and third parties. Noam Chomsky is part of it, John Halle, Jeffrey St Clair, and Andrew Smolski are involved, all of the left persuasion.
Halle and Chomsky, or is it Chomsky and Halle?, started it by coming out for Hillary Clinton arguing that she's a lesser evil than Trump and the Republicans and that at least we could hold the fort while Clinton is Prez while making progress on the tactical front, or some such bullshit. They provide an eight point rationale to support their case. To them, lesser evil voting is this:
"Simply put, LEV involves, where you can, i.e. in safe states, voting for the losing third party candidate you prefer, or not voting at all. In competitive "swing" states, where you must, one votes for the "lesser evil" Democrat."
But they give voting and participating in the electoral process the Howard Zinn approach.
"The left should devote the minimum of time necessary to exercise the LEV choice then immediately return to pursuing goals which are not timed to the national electoral cycle."
Oh ya Noam? Those time tested goals that never get us anywhere?
Basically their rationale is that a Trump presidency will result in "terrible suffering on the most vulnerable segments of society" while also making the "establishment center" (the right wing Democratic party" seem a reasonable alternative. And by inference, they're saying Clinton's presidency wouldn't result in such terrible suffering on the most vulnerable segments of society. Hey Noah, ask the people of Haiti and Libya.
I get it, the old one step forward, two steps back thing.
They (Hall and Chomsky, Chomsky and Hall) even have the audacity to say that although on the surface it might appear that Trump's "foreign policies", i.e., approach to U.S. imperialism, could be better than Clinton's approach to U.S. imperialism, his right wing nationalistic tendencies could be worse. The evil warmonger imperialist Queen of the Universe Hillary Clinton? Ya right Hall and Oates.
http://johnhalle.com/outragesandinterludes/?p=1065
Do people remember how popular Hall and Oates were? They're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for crying out loud.
So Andrew Smolski of Counterpunch writes an article and basically tells them they're full of shit, but in a nice way and with alot of big words like Chomsky and Hall/Hall and Chomsky used. The gist of his argument was that Clinton is Satan and we should vote third party. Not really, but pretty close.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/29/to-my-haters-a-rejoinder-to-halle-and-chomsky/
Then Chomsky and Hall/Hall and Chomsky call Smolski's argument "idiotic" and part of the "lunatic and sociopathic left". Smolski didn't like that so he wrote another article further criticizing Chomsky and Hall/Hall and Chomsky.
He asks why they don't call on the left's current Savior Bernie J.C. Sanders to break from the Democratic party and build a third party or join forces with the left's Savior politicians in waiting, Jill Stein and Kwame Sawant. He asks where is the "radical imagination in the US again?"
Radical? Trying to form a third political party in the United States of Empire is radical?
Shit.
So here we have one of the supposed icons of fighting the man, Chomsky, saying people should vote for Hillary "the war criminal" Clinton", a woman responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the poveritization of millions.
Then we have these other professional lefties with big words saying we need to get radical and start the decades long process of building a third party so the left can have a more significant impact in the oligarchy that is the U.S. Congress. Maybe, just maybe, in a couple more decades we can really have single payer and free college. The wars will go on and the wealth inequality will astronomify, but we could be talking $17.50 an hour by 2035!
Fuck.
St. Clair of Counterpunch, to his credit, rightly lambasts Chomsky and especially Hall while supporting his columnist Smolski. He didn't say so but I suppose he's a "radical" third party proponent too.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/29/noam-chomsky-john-halle-and-henry-the-first-a-note-on-lesser-evil-voting/
That's not radical, that's working within the system. It's trying to elect some of the 535 politicians that are somehow supposed to "represent" over 330 American in Congress. A Congress that has an 8% approval rating from the public. And most of the approvers must have misunderstood the question because they can't be that stupid, right?
I wrote an article recently called "The Trouble with Third parties". In it I explained that a "radical" revolution should be one that eliminates the power structure of the elite and creates a new political and economic system for the people. I argued that the ruling elite are pushing the planet and the people to destruction, causing great misery in their quest for global domination and that we don't have decades, morally or practically, to "fuck around" with third party politics.
We need a real Revolution and those advocating "fighting the man" and "taking on the establishment" like Chomsky and Hall and even Smolski and St. Clair, like it or not, are leading the so called radical left into another failed and forgetten quest.
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