- Re: Cook: Why the left’s case for lesser evil sounds hollow Archived Message
Posted by brooks
on May 24, 2020, 12:39 am, in reply to "Cook: Why the left’s case for lesser evil sounds hollow"
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I like Cook, but that was a disaster of an article. Not only does it rely on dubious generalizations about the "left", it makes a whole host of strange, evidence-free assumptions about various demographics within these already questionable categories, e.g. So for young leftists, not voting for Biden may help to resolve their own uncertainty about whether the US system is redeemable or not. It is the step they feel they need to take to educate themselves and their peers on whether their energies should be directed chiefly at fighting the Democratic establishment or abandoning the system entirely and taking to the streets. How does not voting - or voting for that matter - resolve the uncertainty of these "young leftists"? How does it "educate" them as to where their energies should be directed? It's total nonsense. They can learn what a fraud the two-party system is by reading, reflecting, looking at history, looking at the hideous results of that fraud all around them, doing institutional analysis related to campaign funding, lobbying, ownership, etc. The act of voting or abstaining doesn't do anything to increase this understanding, for one because there's no way of knowing what the consequences of that solitary, trivial act were. And what does a liberal poseur like Medhi Hasan have to do with anything related to the "left"? What general conclusions can be drawn from anything that sad little chancer has to say about voting or anything else ? An argument can be made that getting a Democrat in would give the planet - by the timescale of the Doomsday Clock - another few minutes of breathing room. An argument can be made that it would have no effect. And an argument can be made that it would move the minute hand in the opposite direction. I've heard them all and none sound more compelling than the other to me. These are contingent, speculative political judgements, not mathematics. Everyone can think about it and make that decision for themselves and vote or abstain accordingly. In the absence of mass movements to replace the existing apocalyptic system which will take us to midnight one way or another, it is of little importance. To claim otherwise is to fetishize a largely meaningless process, which I think Cook is guilty of doing here. |