The classic attack ad and the notion of the “lesser evil” go hand-in-hand.
The American public votes largely on the basis of attack ads painting the opposing candidate as evil. When so much fear is generated that there is only one thing to do – vote for the lesser evil.
This strategy assures that third parties never take root – and that voters never get what they really want – as long as they are always voting against what they fear.
Vote for a Third Party? You’re voting for Caligula! For Hitler! The parties themselves are never held responsible for fielding terrible candidates or ignoring their base. It’s always the voter’s fault for deviating from the script, not getting with the program.
Why a huge swath of working-class voters would ever embrace a Republican billionaire is a mystery to me. People have been swayed by an ignorant huckster who speaks gibberish at a fourth grade level and is woefully unconcerned with facts, whose only talent is selling himself and nostalgia for imagined days of American Empire. His supporters wave away all his defects of character, errors of judgment, moral failures, evasions, his baldface lies. What they like about the man is that he can stand at a podium and regale them like a Goodfella at a bar. Like the gangster, they think he’s strong, got all the right connections, knows how to get the job done. They also buy the lie that the alternative is a woman whose election would spell the end of civilization as we know it. Let’s not forget – they were once close friends.
But Democrats are equally blind to venality from their Anointed One. She may not be a billionaire herself (the family business is only worth half that), but she and her husband are certainly friends with enough of them. The credulity of her supporters – that a candidate living in gold-plated luxury really cares about the little guy – is pathetic. Unlike her opponent, the Democrat actually has a record of accomplishment – much of it negative. Unnecessary wars, invasions, destabilizing other nations, drones, extrajudicial killings, a coup in Honduras, support of an Apartheid-like occupation in Israel, propping up of autocratic regimes, shady dealings through the Family Business, lies, evasions. Like their Republican brethren, Democrats shut their eyes to what they refuse to see. Sure, she’s a foreign policy disaster. But at least she’ll do something for women and appoint some great Supreme Court justices. The alternative is just a goose-step away from Hitler. So we are told.
Republicans just want to go back to the 1950’s – or possibly the 1850’s. America was once Great (those being the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency). Let’s return to that Greatness, put gays back in the closet, shut down the abortion clinics, and rededicate ourselves to killing Contras and Iranians. USA! USA! USA! For this we need god-fearing patriots who go abroad with Bibles in hand to kill heathens and come back to run the country according to a weird mix of Christian Shariah, Ayn Rand, and Austrian economists. This is the essence of the New Republican Party.
Democrats love their gay children and their brown neighbors no more or less than Republicans, but they realize that the country is changing, and you can’t step in the way of change coming at you like a freight train. This is realistic and admirable. But when it comes to American Exceptionalism, Democrats sound just like Republicans. Most believe that the U.S. should continue to build up its military and flex its superpower muscles; that the U.S. has the “right” to invade any other country at will; that we can go into Pakistan (or any other country on earth) with drones to kill terrorists – even if we kill a few civilians by accident. We’re not putting boots on the ground, after all. This kind of war doesn’t count as war. And, besides, this is our right. We are exceptional. We have to be the world’s Top Cop. There are no other choices. To do otherwise is irresponsible isolationism, shirking our responsibility, rejecting our exceptional world role.
Far from being the “responsible ones,” it was Democrats who dropped nuclear weapons on fellow human beings, Democrats who amped-up the long Viet Nam war, killing up to two million people, Democrats who overwhelmingly voted for the War on Iraq. And the Democrats of today who have expanded the number of countries with whom we are now at permanent war since taking over following the Bush administration. Sadly, when it comes to foreign policy and militarism – and spying on civilians and crackdowns on whistleblowers – there is virtually no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
If Democrats pride themselves that they are the Lesser Evil, it is only fair to ask – a lesser evil for whom? Iraqis? Afghanis? Syrians? Libyans? Palestinians? Hondurans? Innocent victims of drone attacks? Fracking opponents? Whistleblowers? Civil Libertarians?
$15 an hour and a Supreme Court Justice may not be enough to offset all this “lesser” evil.
Comments are closed.