on Chomsky and the lesser evil

Submitted by bunsk on Fri, 07/08/2016 - 12:16pm

I should start by saying that for me, listening to Noam speak about US foreign policy or our politics is spiritual, like going to church and seeing the light of God. The things he says are usually so self evident as to seem obvious, and another person whose speech shares that self evidence is Bernie Sanders. If anybody knows Shillary's deal, it's Chomsky. I suspect that the lesser evil he's talking about is at least electing someone who has a clue, however corrupt, about government, as opposed to saying "Fuck it all, let's elect a TV star and really throw a wrench into the works." I suspect he feels the implications are worse for the anarchy a trump presidency could bring than even the wretched status quo. I don't think he's falling in line, as he's already excluded from the charade.

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Submitted by duckpin on Fri, 07/08/2016 - 12:40pm

record of promoting war and the overthrow of both democratically elected governments and authoritarian, though stable, governments. Along with picking leaders for foreign countries through force, there are the hundreds of thousands people killed, made sick, maimed, and made refugees. I think her record on foreign affairs is horrible.

We are about to have another candidate - Trump - who has no record other than extremely bellicose statements. His statements are horrible in my view.

How professor Chomsky can pick one or the other is not explained to my satisfaction and although I am an admirer of most of what he's written, I think he fails to make a convincing case here and seems to be abandoning many of his long held beliefs.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Submitted by neoconned on Fri, 07/08/2016 - 12:40pm

As Andrew Smolski puts it, in response to Noam Chomsky and John Halle critiquing his earlier CounterPunch article, No Lesser Evil, Not This Time:

[Halle and Chomsky] willfully ignore that the logic of lesser evil voting (LEV) is a causal mechanism pushing the political structure to the right.

[snip]

If you advocate that third parties should be abandoned in contentious states, then you are advocating that third parties should be abandoned....Why should the Democrats care about progressive demands when the Congressional Progressive Caucus is only 29% of the party and there is no left flank to apply pressure? And why should they feel threatened by a left flank that will abandon itself as soon as there is anything substantial at risk?

[snip]

Because [Halle and Chomsky] themselves treat the Democrats as the most left option in contentious elections, and openly advocate against voting for third parties in those contests, they relinquish any possible power people could have over the Democrats.

[snip]

By saying we should do anything to stop Trump regardless of its negative effects on organizing alternatives, we admit to the Democrats that we on the left are captives. We won’t lay any groundwork for the future, but instead we will ensure four more years of political terrain that saw the violent, coordinated repression of Occupy, the sprouting anew of fascism in the context of an economic wasteland, and the continued expansion of the surveillance state and the military-industrial complex.

[snip]

What if instead of Chomsky getting coverage for supporting Clinton as the LEV in swing states, he spent his time calling for Bernie to break from the Democrats and begin building an alternative party? What if Halle and Chomsky spent the same amount of energy advocating with Kshama Sawant and Jill Stein? What if we had a radical imagination in the US again?

What if that last thought were even possible? It's my opinion that corporate television has destroyed any possibility of that happening. The American Sheeple only know what the Idiot Box tells them - and for only a couple of weeks.

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

Submitted by bunsk on Fri, 07/08/2016 - 4:40pm

You don't see Noam anywhere in corporate media; 3rd parties get a lot less mention in corporate media than even Bernie - deliberately so. Like any other subject, options presented are limited to what's "acceptable", or in other words, what supports the desired narrative. If Bernie, running an essentially mainstream campaign, is prevented from gaining traction, what chance does any 3rd party have to actually prevail? Bernie himself must have assumed this, and thus saw running as a dem as his best option. Noam says, if you're in a safe state, go ahead and vote 3rd party, but in a swing state vote LO2E, because trump would be even worse than you-know-who. Bottom line looks like 3rd party, not an option; dem party not an option; gop not an option; what next? When all is said and done, Bernie will say vote against trump too...

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Submitted by lizzyh7 on Fri, 07/08/2016 - 1:33pm

about The Rump saying he may, or may not, actually take office IF he should win. I know, NYT propaganda and all, but the idea makes a lot of sense to me personally. Why would Trump really want to take on all that a POTUS has to deal with? Like, for real? When he can simply burnish his brand and go right back to reality TV? This whole damned farce is just that - a farce to get the rubes to vote supposed lesser evil and the big EVIL may not even come to office and may never have wanted to in the first place.

The last line of neoconned's post is spot on about Chomsky/Halle - if they spent any time at all working to legitimize a true Third Party they might retain some shred of credibility, but advocating doing again what we HAVE ALREADY BEEN DOING for the last 50 years is hardly some big revelation, unless that revelation is being too damned weak and spineless to be truly radical, as these guys once were. We've seen so many people that we thought were on our side selling out to the money machine, hardly surprising to see a few more.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur