“The evils of ‘lesser evilism.’”

‘A flinch from reality and possibility.’

The ‘lesser evil.’ The Gaza Strip, 2024. (Screenshot, France 24.)

“Unprecedented” is a word journalists were taught, when they were required to acquire and abide by professional standards, to use with the utmost caution, if not to avoid altogether. What under the sun is unprecedented? Whatever the event or circumstance or phenomenon, there was almost certainly a prior case. This was the reasoning in that long-ago time when one learned to use language scrupulously in the cause of meaning.

The elections scheduled for 5 November prompt a rethink here at The Floutist.

Are our times unprecedented in that the United States now openly arms a genocide in Gaza, the expansion of terrorist Israel's war across West Asia, and the subversion of all international norms, institutions, and laws? Or do the two mainstream candidates, setting aside honorable fringe figures with no chance of victory, stand together as the worst, most unqualified—indeed, the most ridiculous—in American history? Or is this election the first in which those who insist on voting are offered an absurd paradox—the choice of no choice—in that they will support lawless conduct no matter which lever they pull when they draw the curtain?

Or, for Americans, are all three correct: Is this is an unprecedented time no matter which way one turns the question?

The Floutist now publishes the first of two essays taking up the critical decisions facing those who go to the polls nine days hence and, dilating the lens, what it means—the fundamental nature of the transaction—for those who choose to participate in elections in our post-democratic era.

—The Editors.

Cara Marianna

27 OCTOBER—We met friends for lunch at a country café in New England on a sunny day in December almost a year ago. It was a cheerful occasion until the conversation turned to politics and to the one thing that had occupied our minds, and dominated our daily conversations, since it began some weeks earlier: Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and America’s support of it.

With Israel’s savage attack then entering its third month, it was by that time clear for all the world to see—in the obscene casualty numbers, in the grotesque level of destruction, in the targeting of medics, academics, journalists, and U.N. personnel, and as articulated by numerous of fhe Zionist state’s leaders at the highest levels of office—that Israel’s unambiguous intent was indeed genocide.

No matter.

Loyal Democrats all, our friends were worried not that their president—a man each had voted for and, at that time, the presumed presidential candidate—had made himself and the country complicit in genocide, but that, if elected, Donald Trump would overturn America’s democracy, throw his opponents in prison, and establish a dictatorship—ruining the environment along the way.

Reluctantly, even somewhat grudgingly, our luncheon companions acknowledged the gravity of Israel’s behavior and America’s complicity. Still, to a one they intended then to vote for Biden, as they almost certainly now intend to vote for Kamala Harris as—but what else? —the “lesser-evil” candidate.

■

Precisely because so many of us have been voting “the lesser evil” for so long—allowing those so designated to substitute for genuine political leadership, allowing the argument altogether to substitute for adherence to democratic processes, for popular programs, for policies that put American people and American security interests ahead of corporate profit and the twisted agendas of military and Deep State careerists—we are now faced with the absurd and demented choice of a Harris or Trump presidency.

This is a choice with little distinction.