On Boiling Frogs

[Jackpine Radical]

Some have suggested that it’s wrong to vote for candidates whom they perceive as the lesser of two evils because it requires you to still vote for an evil, and over time the evil becomes normalized and entrenched, and there is an inevitable drift toward greater evil.

I disagree, not so much with the perspective on the drift toward evil, but with the strategy of purism, which generally means either not voting or voting for some marginal but ideologically sanitary candidate.

I think maybe it's possible to use your vote as a harm-reduction effort without ever losing sight of how far off-kilter things have gone. I'm not sure if I can gauge the status of public opinion because I pretty much unplugged myself from the mass media years ago--decades ago--and have not been not getting my daily ration of 5-minute Hate sessions, but it is my impression that a lot of people know how far the evil has advanced, and are awaiting an opportunity to get things straight.

It is important too to remember that there has always been evil and oppression in the world, and certainly in America. We have been an empire, often an evil one, for a long time. The nation was founded on slavery. We took the land by genocide. The early labor movement was met by goons, Guardsmen and guns. The press, even when ownership was local, was always in the hands of the moneyed classes and served their interests (if only because the poor rarely bought ads). In World War I, the First Amendment was effectively suspended and people went to prison for advocating peace. Troops confronted starving veterans in the years after the war. (I have often wondered what went through the heads of the troops who were ordered out to suppress their erstwhile brothers in arms). Remember Smedley Butler's little Central American wars. The Civil Rights movement? Remember the dogs, the fire hoses, the bombings.

The evil has always been with us. I think our will to recognize and fight the evil has waxed and waned over the generations. I don't know where we are as a nation right now. The media are not about to tell us. The Powers that Be have a vested interest in making us believe that we are few and isolated. But we were out in the streets in 2002 and '03 expressing opposition to the threat and then the reality of war in unprecedented numbers--certainly a lot more than the Teabaggers ever managed to mount, with all their media hype and big-money sponsors. And we did elect Obama. And public opinion does seem to favor peace, universal health care, and preserving the social safety nets, even as our overlords plot to betray us.

I think that "normal times" almost always involve a drift toward evil as the dark forces of fascism slowly consolidate their grip, and that people of good will can at best slow that drift. But then there are certain "abnormal times," when people rise and make something new for themselves. I think of the American and French Revolutions, of the German "48'ers," (who didn't get their revolution in Germany, but came to America and consistently elected socialist mayors in Milwaukee until about 1960) of the abolitionists, of the New Deal, of the Civil Rights Movement, of the protests against Vietnam. I also recognize that the gains made in each of those abnormal periods were typically ephemeral and partial.

I have a strong sense that abnormal times are coming again, and something is about to happen in the world that we can only dimly glimpse at present. I think it could go either way--into fascism or into a renaissance of the spirit. Maybe first into fascism and then into a renaissance that arises from the mud of a fevered and very sick planet when the machinery of fascism collapses.

[uponit7771]

1. I find that most people who make these arguments are doing little to get more progressives in office

[leveymg]

2. And some of us have been working for decades for change "within the system", and are just sick of

what we see is the outcome of all that effort to elect progressives to political office.

For instance, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA-11th Cong. Dist.), for whom I knocked 4,000 doors in '08, yesterday said he'll support keeping Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent "because the economy is struggling." Enough said?

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. If this was a single party system, I might agree. But it isn't.

In a two-party system, the only way to encourage one party to not take the path of evil is to NEVER allow it to prosper by going down that path.

As has been said many, many times - the Democratic party today is to the right of the Republican party of the 60s. The ONLY way that happened was by incrementally drifting to the right to capture RW votes, driving the left away. It is not coincidence that the Independents and 'left fringe' parties have been growing as the Democratic party has been declining.

Vote between a RW Republican and a LW Dem, and you will wind up with either a RW victory or a LW victory. Vote between a RW Republican and a RW Dem, and you will wind up with a RW victory, regardless.

It is incredibly simple.

Voting for a RW Dem will not take the country to the left - it will only speed the drift to the right.

[LiberalArkie]

5. Amen

[FiveGoodMen]

7. And another Amen.

[TheKentuckian]

4. Keeping an eye on how off kilter things are and correcting the imbalance are not the same thing

[woo me with science]

6. I always comfort myself by realizing that the frog boiling thing is a myth.

Hopefully we'll jump out, too.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Let's hope that people are at least as smart as frogs.

Some days I wouldn't take any bets on that one, though