2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumIt’s OK to reject the choice of a tyrannical liberal or a right-wing tyrant
Some of us just want to watch the world Bern.
Vote for Hillary, be a sucker: Its OK to reject the choice of a tyrannical liberal or a right-wing tyrant
Vote for Hillary or be responsible for Trump is slogan of someone maintaining -- or being played -- by the system
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/06/vote_for_hillary_be_a_sucker_its_ok_to_reject_the_choice_of_a_tyrannical_liberal_or_a_right_wing_tyrant/
I dislike voting as a model of political engagement, especially in a corrupt and constrained system that devalues grassroots organizing and tries to limit our imagination to mechanical support of stage-managed icons. Yet I accept that people find inspiration in public figures and express approval by casting votes, sometimes the only political commodity available to a disempowered public. We can critique U.S. elections without being contemptuous of their participants.
Most election skeptics actually value (and perhaps overvalue) their votes. Pundits who insist on voting as a precondition of respectability exhibit contempt for anybody who rejects the mythologies of U.S. exceptionalism. To be respectable, one mustnt simply vote. One must vote correctly. Such entreaties preclude third-party candidates or acts of conscience deemed inadequately practical. We remain confined to a political canon that produced the greatest crisis of inequality in world history.
snip
The argument is a classic form of liberal discipline meant to shame the recalcitrant into obedience. It confers responsibility for national travails onto those who choose different ways of political consumption and participation. Its a good example of why many thoughtful people renounce the electoral system. When a complex project like democracy is limited to two airbrushed party bureaucrats, venal strategies of coercion are inevitable.
This brand of disciplining rose to prominence during Ralph Naders candidacy in 2000 and is dutifully repeated by waspish blowhards every four years. While reasonable people understand that debate will arise over voting strategies, there is little consideration of the merits of voting third party or not voting at all, which, contrary to neoliberal orthodoxy, can certainly be an affirmational act of participation. When folks with loud voices and large audiences assign blame for the terrible state of U.S. governance on people who make ethical decisions to avoid cosigning injustice, were no longer dealing with reason but with numbingly inane superstition.
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)I guess this was a more well reasoned article than I thought.
VulgarPoet
(2,872 posts)Only reason this has as few views as it does is for reasons that will doubtlessly earn me a hide if mentioned. I leave that to your no doubt talented imagination.
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)It's a delicate subject, but one that needs to be (carefully) discussed.
Does one take the frying pan over the fire if it might help to speed up the deconstruction of a system that is already crumbling at both ends?
And is there another way to speed the process up? Or can we truly have the best of everything and subvert the system by participating in it?
VulgarPoet
(2,872 posts)But we are obligated to at least attempted, wholeheartedly within the confines of the system before going full steam.
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)So, I'll vote. But it'll will probably be a write-in candidate if I don't feel I can ethically vote for evil. Even it's the "lesser of" version.
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)I can understand why there are not many comments yet considering most of DU does exactly what this article mentions.
Todays_Illusion
(1,209 posts)TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)Who gets paid to think about things critically and deeply.
Steven Salaita currently holds the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut.
Todays_Illusion
(1,209 posts)TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)Well, okay, it does if you are adamant about it.