It's not about winning. It's about learning to say "No" to a political system that expects you to ratify a Hobson's choice election cycle after election cycle.
Resist. Refuse. Renounce.
Do you have a conscience? Do you have free will? Prove it.
Whether we end up with fat Fascist Trump or geriatric Genocide Joe, we're going to need all hands with any decency on deck come January 2025. Every man for himself is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Kamala Harris calling for a cease-fire AND the total elimination of Hamas.
The Republican Party has morphed into a personality cult of the neo-fascist Strong Man--who is, in reality, a very weak character, but isn't that always the case with so-called "Strong Men"?
The Democratic Party opposes this personality cult with an octogenarian sponsor of genocide who is showing clear signs of cognitive decline. Why? Because it cannot locate within its ranks a youthful, cognitively robust individual who would intervene in any case of ethnic cleansing or genocide whether or not they considered the perpetrator a valued ally?
Really? There's no one else qualified to lead the Party and to be the federal government's Chief Executive?
What a ship of fools.
The streets are not the only place in which dissent may be expressed. The ballot box is a perfectly legitimate venue for protest.
A protest vote is not "thrown away." Protests are expressions of dissent and a sign of health in the body politic.
Most of the votes I've cast in national elections over the past 40+ years have been expressions of dissent.
But there are many people in the U.S. today who lack the political imagination necessary to protest. So, instead, they follow the party line, ratify the unconscionable, and then try to justify their vote by pretending it is "realpolitik" when, in fact, it is just lazy, unprincipled, conformist, and craven.
In my experience, that's most Democrats.
I'm beginning to think that Genocide Joe will win handily in November. The frightened Libs will vote for him DESPITE the genocide BECAUSE TRUMP. And I think a significant percentage of Trumpers will vote for G.J. BECAUSE the genocide and Biden's border policies are not that different from Trump's. So they can achieve some of their racist goals without the three-ring circus that Trump in the White House would entail.
This may be why Trump is promising more fascism across the board should he be re-elected: to keep supporters who are having second thoughts in the fold.
In November, the American electorate will be asked to choose the next chief executive of the most powerful and militarily dangerous country in the world.
The political class is offering us a choice between an 81 year old career politician who is in obvious cognitive decline and a 77 year old narcissistic bloviator with a Messianic complex that has been cultivated by his white Christian nationalist supporters.
Out of a country of 340 million people, the choice comes down to one of these two?
You heard that Brexit was the end of the world as we know it, and YOU BELIEVED IT?
You heard that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was the first step in Vladimir Putin's quest for world domination, and YOU BELIEVED IT?
You heard that Israel had "no choice" but to commit genocide in Gaza because Hamas represents an existential threat to Israel's survival, and YOU BELIEVED IT?
What will you believe next? That an invasion from Mars is under way?
I believe, with Lionel Trilling, that there is a moral obligation to be intelligent. The hard work of thinking involves questioning claims: it is a form of intellectual self-defense that saves me the eventual embarrassment of discovering that I spent my life booking passage on a Ship of Fools.
With every passing day, the stubborn resistance of a tiny stateless people exposes not only the moral bankruptcy of the American empire and its Zionist ally, but their constitution as criminal enterprises. LONG LIVE PALESTINE! 🇵🇸
