Juan Cole asks, Did your mother drop you on your head?
I see too many people agonizing over this election. Will they vote for the Greens? Libertarians? Is Hillary as bad as Trump?
Did your mother drop you on your head? (Juan Cole, Save America from Trump to fix America, or, Did your Mother Drop you on Your Head?)
Today's post on Juan Cole's blog Informed Comment is an impassioned plea addressed to those who consider voting for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein because they believe that there is no difference between Clinton and Trump, or maybe they just cannot vote for Clinton for all the reasons Cole lays out. He gets why people do not want to vote for Clinton, for these reasons and more:
Sec. Clinton is from that generation of baby boomer Democrats who decided in the Reagan era that they had to become Eisenhower Republicans ever to hold office. So she surrendered to Wall Street & etc. We know that. But she can be pressured, just as Eisenhower was pressured (if only we could get back to his tax policies!) We can oppose her if she drags her feet on key issues....
We can’t oppose Trump because he has made it clear that he will rule as dictator and will brook no opposition. He has lots of goons to sic on his critics already, and would pick up their entire Federal government if he wins....
I have made my peace with being a serf who gets to vote for the candidates the two parties (mainly representing the corporations) present me with.... Civil disobedience seems increasingly called for with regard to hydrocarbons. And, many bad features of the system could be changed if only enough people cared. But we can’t do that if America is dead. Clinton won’t kill it, however wrongheaded some of her announced policies. We survived Bush, though with a $6 trillion bill, and we can survive Clinton. We can’t survive Trump.
Things are trending Trump's way. FiveThirtyEight's algorithm now gives Trump a 33.8 percent chance of winning, up from 25 percent on Monday. It can happen here. It remains for each of us to ask, where do I stand? And where will I take my stand on November 9, 2016?
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
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Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do... (W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939)