It's too late to deal. I call.
All
right. All right. You know how we're always supposed to vote for the
lesser evil candidate, but then four years later they're both more evil?
I guess.
candidate was for taxing the rich and ending wars and fixing NAFTA and
restoring the rule of law and protecting civil liberties and tackling
climate change and passing the Employee Free Choice Act, and this time
the lesser evil candidate is for cutting Social Security and Medicare
and spying without warrants and letting the CIA and Special Forces kill
people every day and expanding NAFTA to the whole damn world and
establishing an assassination program for men women and children and
imprisoning people forever without charge or trial and drilling more
oil?
Well, yeah, when you put it that way.
No, I'm not
putting it that way. Remember, I'm agreeing that the more evil guy is
more evil. We've been there, done that, right?
Right, so " ?
OK,
so if we vote for the lesser evil guy every time but then the two
choices are both more evil, there must be something else we should be
doing. And I have an idea what it is. And we can't do it if we're
doing lesser evil voting. So, I don't want Obama to win. I don't want
Romney to win. I don't imagine that Stein or Anderson can win. I don't
think the outcome of the election can send a message. I'm not
interested in the outcome at all, because I'm more interested in whether
the people of this country are doing this other thing I have in mind,
and it just so happens that the only way they can do it is if they are
the kind of people who vote for Stein or Anderson.
So, you want Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson?
No.
I voted for Stein. Anderson is great too. I don't give a rat's
derriere whether they get 1% or 20%, except as a side effect. I'm not
interested in them, although I like them both. I'm interested in the
millions of people who are going to vote or not vote and in what kind of
people they are.
Who cares what kind of people they are if Romney ruins their country.
He
can't. He can't do it if they're the kind of people I have in mind.
And either Obama or Romney will do it, perhaps at slightly different
speeds, if people allow them to.
I don't understand.
OK,
well, let me try to explain. It's hard to put into a sound byte.
Change comes from broad-based popular movements that impact the entire
culture. This is how we got civil and political rights, how we got
workplace rights and environmental protections -- such as they are.
Everything worth achieving has been achieved by educating, organizing,
inspiring, and pressuring the government, and not by picking the right
portion of the government to reelect, cheer for, and withhold all
criticism from. Now, you can say you want to vote for the lesser evil
person while simultaneously protesting him, but it doesn't work that
way. Most people's minds and most popular organizations devote
themselves to lesser evilism on a permanent basis, not just the week of
an election. Obama in 2009 told the big environmentalist groups not to
talk about climate change, and most of them haven't mentioned it since,
even in the midst of a hurricane. One group mentioned it and declared
that the tar sands pipeline would be Obama's test, but the price for
failing the test is having that group and its members vote for Obama's
reelection a little less cheerfully. Obama told the unions and advocacy
groups not to say "single-payer healthcare" and they obeyed, forbidding
mention of it at their rallies, asking instead for a mysterious "public
option" that was then of course denied them. You'd think it would be
hard for people to sell out this way, especially in non-election years,
but they help themselves along by the art of selective information
consumption. Most -- not all, but most -- Obama voters have managed not
to know about drone wars or kill lists or the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. And, of course, it's extra hard to engage in serious
activism while unaware what's going on. By activism I mean educating,
organizing, rallying, marching, lobbying, reporting, editorializing,
inspiring, blockading, boycotting, interrupting, mocking, replacing, and
nonviolently resisting evil policies in the thousands and thousands of
ways available to nonviolent activists. Someone said to me yesterday:
"But Martin Luther King Jr. didn't start a third party." Of course he
didn't. Neither am I. I wouldn't have wanted him to. I wouldn't want
you to. But he also didn't sell out to an existing party. He didn't
endorse and campaign for candidates. He didn't tell anyone that voting
was the only tool available, because -- of course -- voting comes far
down the list of tools that have proven effective through history. And
when the voting system is as corrupted as ours is now, the only way to
render it even more useless is to promise half the candidates that you
will strive to annoy them throughout their terms but never ever vote
against them (unless it's in a non-swing-state and in small enough
numbers not to matter), and if they'll let you come to meetings at the
White House you'll see what you can do about not annoying them either.
Latinos threatened not to vote for Obama and won some immigration
reforms. Labor unions threatened to bend over, and Obama kicked their
ass. Is this beginning to make sense?
So, you think activism is
more important than elections and you really mean it? So when elections
get in the way of activism you want people to change their electoral
behavior in whatever way will make them better activists, regardless of
what happens in the election?
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