In 1956 I voted for Stevenson. Every four years since then I have voted for the Democratic candidate for president. Every four years I have said, :I'm holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two Evils".
But today I can see that all this time I was wrong. I never voted for the lesser of two Evils. I was actually selecting from a very carefully controlled slate of candidates presented and funded by the Ruling Class. The Ruling Class owns the mass media, the news papers, the school books, the health care and even the kinds of food we eat.
The belief that Carter, Clinton and Obama are not as bad as Reagan, Bush the Greater and Bush the lesser or Romney is a Red Herring. These are the bought and paid for front men for the Empire.
The Democratic Party is not going to turn the Empire around.
And of course I understand that anyone I vote for is not going to be elected, and even if they were they would be crucified. But I am not throwing my vote away. Throwing my vote away would be to vote for people owned by the Ruling Class.
Our ability to turn around America is not going to happen at the rigged polls. It will either come from the rank and file people, or it will not happen.
A small example of this was the efforts by the blind of my state to force the office of services for the blind to be more responsive to our needs. When the system turned a deaf ear, we mounted a ground swell and began a seven year battle to topple the established agency and replace it with a Commission. We accomplished this because people joined together, educated one another, put out the time and money and walked the protest lines.
And all the time we organized our people, the agency staff and the old timers who supported the establishment told us we were just making trouble. We should work with them to keep the agency within the large Social and Health Services Department. They said if we went against the wishes of Governor Dan Evans, he would dismantle our programs. We were told privately that our college students would suffer by being cut off from financial support if they joined our Cause. It took seven years to make one small change in the system. Of course it will take lifetimes to turn around our nation. But it has to begin somewhere. For me it begins with my not voting for even the lesser of the Ruling Classes offerings.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----From: Miriam VieniSent: Saturday, August 04, 2012 7:34 PMSubject: RE: Is Making a Protest Vote in Presidential Elections a Vanity Choice? Good Question!We go round and round about this. Carl, you know we live in a right wing
country. You know that we are not going to have a socialist revolution. You
know that just as the mainstream media spin the news on behalf of
corporations, the Left spins it so that support for its positions within the
public is misrepresented. Over and over, I read statistics to the effect
that the public is in favor of a single payer health system and that the
public is opposed to our continuous state of war. Well, perhaps when the
survey questions were put to a sample of people in a particular manner,
those were the results. However, I know what the people around me are saying
and I hear what their opinions are and what they will and won't support. And
although they are cynical about government and angry at corporations and big
banks, and although they don't like the idea that we are spending money for
war, they tend to choose right wing solutions when they feel frightened or
angry. They tend not to be informed about issues that we talk about on this
list every day. They become viscerally angry at people whom they see as
cheating, like a person not paying subway fare or stealing something from a
store or not finding a job. They say things like, "I'm sure if she looked
hard enough, she could find something". They do not have that same kind of
personal anger at the head of Citibank.
This is the unpleasant reality with which we're faced. Everyone who makes
that choice, that is seen as moral and will somehow, magically, lead to the
downful of the lousy system under which we live, every one of you who
refuses to vote for the lesser of two evils because you are too politically
and ethically pure to do that, maybe be contributing to even worse suffering
than we see now, suffering of the elderly, the poor, the disenfranchised,
and all of the people of color throughout the world whom the U.S. bullies.
Tell me honestly that if you look at Romney and the folks who openly support
him as opposed to Obama, tell me that it truly won't be worse for you and me
if Romney is elected with a Republican sweep in congress which will
accompany his election. Obama may make some cuts to medicare and social
security. Romney and his friends will privatize it all. You want that so
that in the distant future there might be a theoretical revolution?
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2012 7:09 PM
To: ceverett@dslextreme.com; Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: Is Making a Protest Vote in Presidential Elections a Vanity
Choice? Good Question!
This is just a rehash of the same old thinking that has put us where we are
today. Following this logic will play right into the hands of the Ruling
Class. They have set the conditions that limit our choices. . We don't
gain a thing by falling into line.
My friends often tell me that I must choose between God or the Devil.
"Why?" I ask them. "What if I want to select the Wizard of Oz, or the White
Rabbit, or even the Tooth Fairy?"
"But either God or the Devil will win all human's Souls", they cry.
"Says who?" I counter.
"Well, it's in the Bible"!
And so it is written in the Book of the Ruling Class that I must choose
between the one or the other viable candidate if my vote is going to count.
But I don't believe their book. It was written by people in power. A new
book can be written by new people in power. But that new book will never be
written if we keep on playing by the Ruling Classes Rules.
Obama. Romney. You both have taken up with the Empire. I choose neither
one of you. Sure, one of you will win. But when enough people become fed
up...well, it's happened many times before.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: Claude Everett <mailto:ceverett@dslextreme.com>
To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
<mailto:blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2012 9:26 AM
Subject: Is Making a Protest Vote in Presidential Elections a Vanity
Choice? Good Question!
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Consortium News [1] / By Robert Parry [2]
Is Making a Protest Vote in Presidential Elections a Vanity Choice?
Continued from previous page
August 3, 2012 |
My recent article, "The Vanity of Perfectionism [3]," has stirred up
some
anger, in part, because of my choice of the word "vanity" to
describe some
behavior that I have witnessed on the American Left in people who
sit out
presidential elections or cast ballots for third-party candidates
who have
no chance of winning.
So, let me explain what I was driving at. The central point of the
article
was that Americans, especially on the Left, need to get realistic
about
elections and stop using them as opportunities to express
disappointment,
anger or even personal morality. Through elections, Americans are
the only
ones who can select our national leaders, albeit in a limited
fashion.
The rest of the world's people have no say in who's going to run the
most
powerful nation on earth. Only we can, at least to the extent
permitted in
the age of Citizens United. The main thing we can still do is stop
the more
dangerous major-party candidate from gaining control of the
executive powers
of the United States, including the commander-in-chief authority and
the
nuclear codes, not small things.
So, when we treat elections as if they are our moment to express
ourselves,
rather than to mitigate the damage that a U.S. president might
inflict on
the world, we are behaving selfishly, in my view. That's why I used
the word
"vanity." U.S. elections should not be primarily about us.
U.S. elections should really be about others - those people who are
likely
to feel the brunt of American power - Iraqis and Iranians,
Nicaraguans and
Venezuelans, Vietnamese and Cambodians, Palestinians and Syrians,
etc., etc.
Elections also should be about future generations and the
environment.
Whether we like it or not, the choice this year looks to be between
Barack
Obama and Mitt Romney. People were free to run in the primaries to
challenge
these guys and, indeed, Romney faced a fairly large field of
Republicans
whom he defeated. Progressives could have challenged Obama but
basically
chose not to.
I believe it is now the duty of American voters to assess these two
candidates and decide which one is likely to inflict less harm on
the planet
and its people. One of them might even do some good. We can hope.
If you do your research and decide that Romney is that guy, then
vote for
him. If it's Obama, vote for him. (Before you make your decision, I
would
recommend that you read Romney's book, No Apology, a full-throated
neocon
manifesto, which he claims that he wrote himself.)
In my view, everything else that Americans do - throwing away their
votes on
third parties or sitting out the election - are acts of vanity.
Maybe it's
moralistic vanity or intellectual vanity or some other kind of
vanity, but
it is vanity. It has no realistic effect other than to make the
person feel
good.
I've known people who say they have always voted for Ralph Nader or
some
other third-party candidate. Thus, they say, they are not
responsible for
whatever the United States does to other countries. But that
attitude, too,
is vanity.
Instead of doing something practical to mitigate the harm that the
U.S. does
in the world - by voting for the person who might be less likely to
overuse
the U.S. military or who might restrain the emission of greenhouse
gases -
these folks sit on the sidelines basking in their perfection. They
won't
make a call.
The hard decision is to support the imperfect candidate who has a
real
chance to win and who surely will do some rotten things but likely
fewer
rotten things than the other guy - and might even make some
improvements.
I know that doesn't "feel" as satisfying. One has to enter a morally
ambiguous world. But that it is the world where many innocent people
can be
saved from horrible deaths (though not all) and where possibly
actions can
be taken to ensure that future generations are left a planet that is
still
habitable or at least with the worst effects of global warming
avoided.
Has That Technique Ever Worked?
Though the choice of the word "vanity" may have been the most
controversial
part of my article, the bulk of it addressed another issue. Has the
Left's
recurring practice of rejecting flawed Democratic candidates
actually done
any good? Was it preferable for Richard Nixon to defeat Hubert
Humphrey;
Ronald Reagan to beat Jimmy Carter; and George W. Bush to elbow past
Al Gore
to the White House?
If the Left's tendency to punish these imperfect Democrats for their
transgressions had led to some positive result, then the argument
could be
made that more than vanity was involved here, that the effect of
causing
some Democrats to lose was to make later Democrats more progressive
and thus
more favorable to the Left. Or maybe that the Left is on its way to
building
a viable third party that can win nationally.
But any examination of those three case studies - Elections 1968,
1980 and
2000 - would lead to a conclusion that whatever practical goals that
some on
the Left had in mind were not advanced by the Democratic defeat. The
Democrats did not become more progressive, rather they shifted more
to the
center.
All three Republican presidents - Nixon, Reagan and Bush-43 -
extended or
started wars that their Democratic rivals might have ended or
avoided. Those
elections - plus congressional outcomes in 1980, 1994 and 2010 -
also
bolstered the Right and helped consolidate anti-progressive
attitudes on
domestic and foreign policies.
More than four decades after 1968 and a dozen years after 2000,
there is
still no left-wing third party that can do more than play the role
of
spoiler.
Yet, if there has been no positive practical result from these
electoral
tactics in the past - and there is no reasonable expectation for the
future
- then what's the point of repeating them? There's the old saying
that one
definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over
expecting a
different result.
Nor, by the way, is there a popular movement that can significantly
alter
government policies strictly through civil disobedience or via
protests in
the streets - with all due respect to Occupy Wall Street. So, what's
up
here?
The only explanation that I can come up with for throwing away a
vote on a
third-party candidate or not voting for "the lesser evil" is that
such a
choice represents a personal expression of anger or disappointment.
And I
don't mean to disparage anyone's right to feel those emotions. Given
the
recent history, it's hard not to.
But - when some lives can be saved, when some wars can be averted
and when
the planet can possibly be spared from ecological destruction - the
true
moral imperative, in my view, is to engage in the imperfect process
of
voting for the major-party candidate who seems more likely than the
other
one to do those things.
To ignore that imperative, I'm sorry to say, is an act of vanity.
.See more stories tagged with:
robert parry [4],
obama [5],
mitt romney [6]
.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/making-protest-vote-presidential-elect
ions-vanity-choice
Links:
[1] http://www.consortiumnews.com
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/robert-parry
[3]
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/44590/the-vanity-of-perfect
ionism
[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/robert-parry
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/obama-0
Claude Everett
American By Chance , Californian by Choice.
Every one has a disability, Some, are more aware of it than others.
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