The brainwashing-propaganda PR complex sold Biden as a "wise" grown up who, in his advanced age, is like a dear, quirky uncle. His many gaffes are peddled as stuttering, concealing his rotten soul.
We have arrived at that place we were so often warned about - earlier than we somehow reckoned we would. It is the wilderness within where we cannot claim innocence or ignorance, nor appeal for mercy. It is the scene of the crime and our fingerprints are all over the dead and the wounded and the destroyed. We have no choices left, having wasted our strength on gathering the crumbs left by the slavering beasts we have invited to kill on our behalf.
The Trump bogeyman has been the cudgel used by the corrupt Democratic Party to coerce us into voting for Joe Biden in spite of his obvious mental decline and his backing of the genocidal murder of the Palestinians by Israel. I'm so done with that rationale. I cannot in good conscience vote for Biden or any other candidate unequivocally backing Israel.
Historically, in terms of foreign policy, the "lesser evil" claim of Democrats doesn't stand up too well. A They got the US into WWII, Korea and Vietnam. A Democrat dropped the bomb on Japan. A Democrat led war in Europe for the first time since WWII (Yugoslavia in the 1990s).
Reagan stopped Israel's attacks on Lebanon in 1982. He also made serious headway in nuclear disarmament. (I'm no fan of Reagan but credit where credit is due.)
As a recent subscriber to the Floutist I was unfamiliar with your work until now but am looking forward to more.
I have been a Green party member for quite a while. I think that Nader and then, Stein/Baraka were good candidates. I admire Stein. I will be voting Green once again. I'm proud to say, that the last established Dem/Rep candidate i voted for was McGovern, only because he said he would end the Viet war. The lies of the gov't have been known since the viet war and they have telegraphed their intent to establish global hegemony via corporate/political and military power for a longtime
Thanks for this excellent commentary. I especially enjoyed the quote from John Whitbeck. Joe Biden and those that have supported him in Congress should never be allowed to live this down. We must never forgive and never forget this evil. Just as with military aid to Ukraine, the Congress refuses to impose any oversight over the weaponry and financial support we provide Israel. Allowing such oversight would only add to the list of charges they should all be facing for the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing. There is an entire well-funded industry in the US to keep Americans ignorant and to intimidate and harass anyone who might speak out against these crimes. Biden, Congress, and most of the MSM are complicit in this even as they allow Israeli fifth columnists in the US attack and carry out harassment of those American citizens who stand for Palestinian human rights. Hopefully Americans will send a message this November to all those who support and collaborate with Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
Regimes that support and carry out genocide should have no right to exist.
Because I tire of the sex, violence and materialism that is, with few exceptions, the mainstay of American mass culture/cinema, I go to youtube posted cinema for occasional breaks from current events. Lately, I've been watching the 1959-62 Untouchables series with Robert Stack...It occurred to me that the criminal/organized crime world of the 1930's that was the subject of this series never really went away, it just became legalized by the cartels that are our politicians...No, I won't be legitimizing this criminal system by voting in the 2024 elections.
The lesser of two evils argument is hardly going to ring bells in the many parts of the planet that see things as simply evil, or not evil. There are suffering places that haven’t noticed how one party or the other’s presidents veers much from the same basis for national security assessment statements; always viewed in terms of threats to American values, and “interests, never in the light of opportunity to project mutual security, well-being and stability.
The routine use of force to imprint the neocon agenda, the American “morality”, and protect American interests has been an 80-year long developing agenda. Yet, only now is it finally quite clearly understood just what that idea of morality means? Maybe for some folks it is. Did it require Gazan people to die? Somehow only with this newest offense against decency it stands out as revelation? America is complicit in genocide? What? America had not made it perfectly clear over and over that ethics does not apply despite the impressive list of its dead enemies? Is the current genocide its greatest moral stain? Killing millions in Vietnam wasn’t genocide because it was about saving the world from commies. Millions got killed. How does one keep track of this stain or that when it is so diffuse?
Unless ruthless be virtue, and hideous spasms of death and destruction are “worth it” (as long as it’s elsewhere, not Delaware) then one can suppose silly thinking like the LOTE anguish is meaningful, maybe even somehow exculpatory. How does one feel good, or exonerate oneself from such a web of indecency? The lesser of two evils is imaginary. Exoneration? It’s impossible. There is no innocence in the world. But such self indulgence is not really quite the same sort of anguish as the world outside of the anglosphere is, and has been regularly confronted with. America the beautiful spreading its unique virtue by force. What a perverted basis for foreign policy planning.
Despite the outstanding modern example of failure it represents for America, and the light it shines on why it’s called the Great Satan by some of its enemies, the Gazan terror doesn’t stand as an independent point of interest. There are none of these in America’s foreign policy. Things don’t just happen. America has a national security assessment and strategy. It is a belief system, and cannot be proven wrong, thus it’s quite dangerous. In any case, the question is not so much about how Americans can justify voting this way or that. Rather, consider the following. Is the lesser of two evils what America deserves? Does the rest of the world deserve America’s least worst?
Greater security, mutual respect, and cooperative development of potential, and of a new world order is what the world requires. Is either candidate likely to agree to a much reduced American imprint? Assuming such edited behavior actually occurs in one region, won’t it naturally amount to a redirected effort at some “threat” elsewhere? History tends to suggest so. Is either candidate, as President, likely to accept a smaller say-so, or someone else’s values in the balance? Seems incredibly unlikely.
The LOTE seems a moot point, almost pathetic to engage this as a tragic American dilemma, when continuing to participate in the two party rule is the functional equivalent of acquiescence. It’s difficult to see how Biden is necessarily less evil. Or how Trump might be either. Was the firebombing of Dresden less evil than nuking Hiroshima? How does the calculus work? In any case, the list of America’s bogeymen is long. If we are talking make believe increments of things, it’s unpredictable the degree of fubar the future holds, or which candidate will turn out to be the least evil. The idea of degrees of evil is an abstraction, but American bombs are not.
RE: "The LOTE seems a moot point, almost pathetic to engage this as a tragic American dilemma, when continuing to participate in the two party rule is the functional equivalent of acquiescence." Well put. I couldn't agree more. The question is how to engage with our fellow citizens so more and more of us understand what you so clearly articulate. The idea that there is any merit to arguing over degrees of evil, which is the same as asserting that some forms of evil are acceptable, is in a word: evil. Thank you for your comment.
My ramble had no intent to diminish your words. I hope you know. As for what you propose in your kind comment to mine is the question, I have no specific answer. The dividing lines are the borderlines of two contesting belief systems. Belief systems always presuppose values, like the axioms of geometry from which all “proof” is derivative. What I have written as The Geometry Of Morals.
The axioms of our belief systems determine what subsequent “proofs” can be derived, especially when talking political, religious, or cultural systems, inherently emotion based. With conflicting sets of what constitutes “Good”, ethical proofs amount to emotions that have essentially petrified into Truths. It is so because we said so.
Essentially, derived values are most often tautologous. Simple reiteration of, not elaboration from, first assumptions.
This is the terrain upon which opposed value systems collide. Each contrasting system starts from differing axioms. What can be expected from this? Different proofs of things of course. Fundamentally, no such thing as Truth applies regarding which system is more or less so (degrees of what’s preferred to be indivisible). It’s impossible to argue with belief. What’s problematic is beliefs presuppose values, and values are not set matters. Different cultures develop different values. You and I perhaps see the imposition of American values upon the outside world as the same arrogance of thinking as made colonialism seem righteous, and True. Others apparently disagree. Whose understanding of the world is correct? The answer requires reference to a set of values. These are not questions that can be resolved by a better engagement gambit, better logic. It’s my experience that being logical actually makes the engagee somewhat anxious, if not irritated.
I won’t bother you in detail with my thoughts about what can turn opinion and the emotions of people (unless you require I do :), but I don’t think it is better engagements. What has power enough to alter an entire belief system? It’s alogical, i.e. beyond logic. Events, not better arguments catalyze change. Eventually, engagements intending to get citizens to think like me, or like you, or from some other perspectives, for me to think like Joe or Donald or Marjorie or Hilary just create frustration, and often broken friendships. One of my axioms is to try to engage the world and remain unshakeable. This requires training. I’m deficient, but I continue to think like me. In any case, that can’t be helped, and why not is, well, a different story too.
Is it possible for one belief system to be more or less true than another? Does “true” even apply? Preferred maybe, and useful for a specific purpose, maybe too. Just as there are numerous systems of geometry, each can be useful if applied to the right tasks. One is not more true than the others. What makes them all useful however, is that they are all internally consistent. This is the point at which Geometry as analogous to values based belief systems breaks down. Even the best system of belief (if such a term can be applied) is fraught with internal inconsistency. Thou shalt not kill...unless. Still, we believe in the idea of right and wrong; a necessary condition for communal aggregates. So, engagement regarding what’s right is inevitable.
I’ve had enough of engaging my fellow citizens, and of the dismay, and confusion that attends the effort. Recent events the past two years finally put this urge to rest. This may seem like resignation, and if so I apologize, but engaging my fellows to alter their emotions, their beliefs, is a decision I’ve simply designated others to carry on with in my stead. Doing so (engaging) was educational in any event. I’ve since simply subbed expressing myself clearly, and then, go to make things; the real world. This is how I remain calm.
Now, patient to wait on events, to not cancel my fellows based on conflicting thinking is more vital than to convince them of altering their beliefs. Has the argument for or against what’s being believed helped make the American community happier, safer, wiser, more compassionate? There’s no predicting grand patterns of future events. No one knows tomorrow, but one interesting thing about the idea of Karma is its fundamental simplicity. Simple often portends true, or at least easy, useful. If you or I personally, or we collectively, proceed from right thought, right action, good things are more likely to occur. If we proceed from toxic thought, toxic action, good things likely do not occur. One doesn’t need to believe if such a thing as Karma, the moral context to the philosophical notion of cause and effect, exists in the physical world. One only needs to ponder that idea. Does it make sense, or not? In a world so bereft of right thought, and right action will a more engaging argument create good (preferred) results?
With all due respect, what's your point? Whatever Trump would or wouldn't do does not negate the fact that Joe Biden is guilty of complicity in genocide. It does not change the fact that Joe Biden could stop Israel's genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza with one phone call and instead chooses to send more weapons. Voting for Joe Biden isn't magically less morally reprehensible just because Trump is "even more pro Israel." This is Biden's genocide, not Trump's. Which does not mean I support Trump because, generally speaking, you are right about Republicans. Although Biden self-identifies as a Zionist and to my knowledge Trump has never gone that far.
The choice of not voting at all will cause them to claim "voter apathy". A third-party vote shows that voters care, and that we refuse to go along the series of crimes and misdeeds carried out in our name. I intend to vote third party. Who knows? If enough of us do it, they just might notice.
As Emma Goldman said long ago, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal".
I researched the real evil in "The Dark Side: Joe Biden's Journey into Evil."
https://open.substack.com/pub/trygvewighdal/p/the-dark-side-joe-bidens-journey
The brainwashing-propaganda PR complex sold Biden as a "wise" grown up who, in his advanced age, is like a dear, quirky uncle. His many gaffes are peddled as stuttering, concealing his rotten soul.
Thank you for all of the work you put into your piece. I confess I cannot read far into it because Biden makes me so sick. Carry on the good work!
We have arrived at that place we were so often warned about - earlier than we somehow reckoned we would. It is the wilderness within where we cannot claim innocence or ignorance, nor appeal for mercy. It is the scene of the crime and our fingerprints are all over the dead and the wounded and the destroyed. We have no choices left, having wasted our strength on gathering the crumbs left by the slavering beasts we have invited to kill on our behalf.
Thank you, ElisabethM, for this powerful and insightful comment. Among other things, it illustrates the power of language when harnessed to the truth.
The Trump bogeyman has been the cudgel used by the corrupt Democratic Party to coerce us into voting for Joe Biden in spite of his obvious mental decline and his backing of the genocidal murder of the Palestinians by Israel. I'm so done with that rationale. I cannot in good conscience vote for Biden or any other candidate unequivocally backing Israel.
A principled moral stance, well stated.
Historically, in terms of foreign policy, the "lesser evil" claim of Democrats doesn't stand up too well. A They got the US into WWII, Korea and Vietnam. A Democrat dropped the bomb on Japan. A Democrat led war in Europe for the first time since WWII (Yugoslavia in the 1990s).
Reagan stopped Israel's attacks on Lebanon in 1982. He also made serious headway in nuclear disarmament. (I'm no fan of Reagan but credit where credit is due.)
As a recent subscriber to the Floutist I was unfamiliar with your work until now but am looking forward to more.
Thank you.
It is sad beyond belief.
Indeed. Anyone with a conscience is in a state of grief. Thank you for such a simple statement that comes directly from the heart.
I have been a Green party member for quite a while. I think that Nader and then, Stein/Baraka were good candidates. I admire Stein. I will be voting Green once again. I'm proud to say, that the last established Dem/Rep candidate i voted for was McGovern, only because he said he would end the Viet war. The lies of the gov't have been known since the viet war and they have telegraphed their intent to establish global hegemony via corporate/political and military power for a longtime
I salute your wisdom. I voted for the Democrats for far longer than I care to admit.
Thank you. The lesser evil argument was never to be taken serious in my view given neoliberalism leads to fascism.
Thanks for this excellent commentary. I especially enjoyed the quote from John Whitbeck. Joe Biden and those that have supported him in Congress should never be allowed to live this down. We must never forgive and never forget this evil. Just as with military aid to Ukraine, the Congress refuses to impose any oversight over the weaponry and financial support we provide Israel. Allowing such oversight would only add to the list of charges they should all be facing for the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing. There is an entire well-funded industry in the US to keep Americans ignorant and to intimidate and harass anyone who might speak out against these crimes. Biden, Congress, and most of the MSM are complicit in this even as they allow Israeli fifth columnists in the US attack and carry out harassment of those American citizens who stand for Palestinian human rights. Hopefully Americans will send a message this November to all those who support and collaborate with Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
Regimes that support and carry out genocide should have no right to exist.
Thanks for your comment, Chris G. Re: "Regimes that support and carry out genocide should have no right to exist." Amen.
I ain't crawling of the bodies of dead Palestinians to vote for any of 'em. They're earring a tRump presidency all on their own.
Because I tire of the sex, violence and materialism that is, with few exceptions, the mainstay of American mass culture/cinema, I go to youtube posted cinema for occasional breaks from current events. Lately, I've been watching the 1959-62 Untouchables series with Robert Stack...It occurred to me that the criminal/organized crime world of the 1930's that was the subject of this series never really went away, it just became legalized by the cartels that are our politicians...No, I won't be legitimizing this criminal system by voting in the 2024 elections.
Simple- Team D cultists will rationalize. As will Team R cultists.
We have arrived at the least desirable of locations. We are being offered Hobson's choice which is no choice at all.
The lesser of two evils argument is hardly going to ring bells in the many parts of the planet that see things as simply evil, or not evil. There are suffering places that haven’t noticed how one party or the other’s presidents veers much from the same basis for national security assessment statements; always viewed in terms of threats to American values, and “interests, never in the light of opportunity to project mutual security, well-being and stability.
The routine use of force to imprint the neocon agenda, the American “morality”, and protect American interests has been an 80-year long developing agenda. Yet, only now is it finally quite clearly understood just what that idea of morality means? Maybe for some folks it is. Did it require Gazan people to die? Somehow only with this newest offense against decency it stands out as revelation? America is complicit in genocide? What? America had not made it perfectly clear over and over that ethics does not apply despite the impressive list of its dead enemies? Is the current genocide its greatest moral stain? Killing millions in Vietnam wasn’t genocide because it was about saving the world from commies. Millions got killed. How does one keep track of this stain or that when it is so diffuse?
Unless ruthless be virtue, and hideous spasms of death and destruction are “worth it” (as long as it’s elsewhere, not Delaware) then one can suppose silly thinking like the LOTE anguish is meaningful, maybe even somehow exculpatory. How does one feel good, or exonerate oneself from such a web of indecency? The lesser of two evils is imaginary. Exoneration? It’s impossible. There is no innocence in the world. But such self indulgence is not really quite the same sort of anguish as the world outside of the anglosphere is, and has been regularly confronted with. America the beautiful spreading its unique virtue by force. What a perverted basis for foreign policy planning.
Despite the outstanding modern example of failure it represents for America, and the light it shines on why it’s called the Great Satan by some of its enemies, the Gazan terror doesn’t stand as an independent point of interest. There are none of these in America’s foreign policy. Things don’t just happen. America has a national security assessment and strategy. It is a belief system, and cannot be proven wrong, thus it’s quite dangerous. In any case, the question is not so much about how Americans can justify voting this way or that. Rather, consider the following. Is the lesser of two evils what America deserves? Does the rest of the world deserve America’s least worst?
Greater security, mutual respect, and cooperative development of potential, and of a new world order is what the world requires. Is either candidate likely to agree to a much reduced American imprint? Assuming such edited behavior actually occurs in one region, won’t it naturally amount to a redirected effort at some “threat” elsewhere? History tends to suggest so. Is either candidate, as President, likely to accept a smaller say-so, or someone else’s values in the balance? Seems incredibly unlikely.
The LOTE seems a moot point, almost pathetic to engage this as a tragic American dilemma, when continuing to participate in the two party rule is the functional equivalent of acquiescence. It’s difficult to see how Biden is necessarily less evil. Or how Trump might be either. Was the firebombing of Dresden less evil than nuking Hiroshima? How does the calculus work? In any case, the list of America’s bogeymen is long. If we are talking make believe increments of things, it’s unpredictable the degree of fubar the future holds, or which candidate will turn out to be the least evil. The idea of degrees of evil is an abstraction, but American bombs are not.
RE: "The LOTE seems a moot point, almost pathetic to engage this as a tragic American dilemma, when continuing to participate in the two party rule is the functional equivalent of acquiescence." Well put. I couldn't agree more. The question is how to engage with our fellow citizens so more and more of us understand what you so clearly articulate. The idea that there is any merit to arguing over degrees of evil, which is the same as asserting that some forms of evil are acceptable, is in a word: evil. Thank you for your comment.
My ramble had no intent to diminish your words. I hope you know. As for what you propose in your kind comment to mine is the question, I have no specific answer. The dividing lines are the borderlines of two contesting belief systems. Belief systems always presuppose values, like the axioms of geometry from which all “proof” is derivative. What I have written as The Geometry Of Morals.
The axioms of our belief systems determine what subsequent “proofs” can be derived, especially when talking political, religious, or cultural systems, inherently emotion based. With conflicting sets of what constitutes “Good”, ethical proofs amount to emotions that have essentially petrified into Truths. It is so because we said so.
Essentially, derived values are most often tautologous. Simple reiteration of, not elaboration from, first assumptions.
This is the terrain upon which opposed value systems collide. Each contrasting system starts from differing axioms. What can be expected from this? Different proofs of things of course. Fundamentally, no such thing as Truth applies regarding which system is more or less so (degrees of what’s preferred to be indivisible). It’s impossible to argue with belief. What’s problematic is beliefs presuppose values, and values are not set matters. Different cultures develop different values. You and I perhaps see the imposition of American values upon the outside world as the same arrogance of thinking as made colonialism seem righteous, and True. Others apparently disagree. Whose understanding of the world is correct? The answer requires reference to a set of values. These are not questions that can be resolved by a better engagement gambit, better logic. It’s my experience that being logical actually makes the engagee somewhat anxious, if not irritated.
I won’t bother you in detail with my thoughts about what can turn opinion and the emotions of people (unless you require I do :), but I don’t think it is better engagements. What has power enough to alter an entire belief system? It’s alogical, i.e. beyond logic. Events, not better arguments catalyze change. Eventually, engagements intending to get citizens to think like me, or like you, or from some other perspectives, for me to think like Joe or Donald or Marjorie or Hilary just create frustration, and often broken friendships. One of my axioms is to try to engage the world and remain unshakeable. This requires training. I’m deficient, but I continue to think like me. In any case, that can’t be helped, and why not is, well, a different story too.
Is it possible for one belief system to be more or less true than another? Does “true” even apply? Preferred maybe, and useful for a specific purpose, maybe too. Just as there are numerous systems of geometry, each can be useful if applied to the right tasks. One is not more true than the others. What makes them all useful however, is that they are all internally consistent. This is the point at which Geometry as analogous to values based belief systems breaks down. Even the best system of belief (if such a term can be applied) is fraught with internal inconsistency. Thou shalt not kill...unless. Still, we believe in the idea of right and wrong; a necessary condition for communal aggregates. So, engagement regarding what’s right is inevitable.
I’ve had enough of engaging my fellow citizens, and of the dismay, and confusion that attends the effort. Recent events the past two years finally put this urge to rest. This may seem like resignation, and if so I apologize, but engaging my fellows to alter their emotions, their beliefs, is a decision I’ve simply designated others to carry on with in my stead. Doing so (engaging) was educational in any event. I’ve since simply subbed expressing myself clearly, and then, go to make things; the real world. This is how I remain calm.
Now, patient to wait on events, to not cancel my fellows based on conflicting thinking is more vital than to convince them of altering their beliefs. Has the argument for or against what’s being believed helped make the American community happier, safer, wiser, more compassionate? There’s no predicting grand patterns of future events. No one knows tomorrow, but one interesting thing about the idea of Karma is its fundamental simplicity. Simple often portends true, or at least easy, useful. If you or I personally, or we collectively, proceed from right thought, right action, good things are more likely to occur. If we proceed from toxic thought, toxic action, good things likely do not occur. One doesn’t need to believe if such a thing as Karma, the moral context to the philosophical notion of cause and effect, exists in the physical world. One only needs to ponder that idea. Does it make sense, or not? In a world so bereft of right thought, and right action will a more engaging argument create good (preferred) results?
I apologize for my wordiness.
does anyone seriously believe that trump would do anything differently? he is even more pro Israel, as are all Repubs.
With all due respect, what's your point? Whatever Trump would or wouldn't do does not negate the fact that Joe Biden is guilty of complicity in genocide. It does not change the fact that Joe Biden could stop Israel's genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza with one phone call and instead chooses to send more weapons. Voting for Joe Biden isn't magically less morally reprehensible just because Trump is "even more pro Israel." This is Biden's genocide, not Trump's. Which does not mean I support Trump because, generally speaking, you are right about Republicans. Although Biden self-identifies as a Zionist and to my knowledge Trump has never gone that far.
The choice of not voting at all will cause them to claim "voter apathy". A third-party vote shows that voters care, and that we refuse to go along the series of crimes and misdeeds carried out in our name. I intend to vote third party. Who knows? If enough of us do it, they just might notice.