I particularly noted this:

not only must we take responsibility for our actions, but the consequences of our actions for others are a far more important consideration than feeling good about ourselves.

This is where my thinking is going, although I would have discarded the "for others" bit. Is registering my rejection of the party duopoly worth the risk of a Trump presidency? Is a potentionally significant percentage of votes for the Greens important enough to ignore the party duopoly altogether? (It should be obvious that I do think Trump would be worse than Clinton. Otherwise, I would not hesitate to vote Green). Which vote would potentionally be less catastrophic for the planet?
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Of course, the whole conversation would be moot if we used ranked-choice voting.

always jam tomorrow, but never jam today.

This thought flashed through my head on reading the title of this essay.

It was the Sound Pattern of English (1968) which Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky wrote which set the stage for a whole paradigm in the study of the sound patterns of human languages and the theoretical basis for explaining how the brain learns and represents language.

Simpler times. That theory of language competency is more or less dead. The boldest attempts to replace it failed. Now we are waiting for the Galileo of neuroscience to write the rules by which to decode the "signal" (yeah, sure, it's basically noise) of the electrical discharges in the brain, and something like a Newton to figure out how to calculate with those rules, and maybe we might gain some insight into how the brain maps language.

Peace and love be with you, reader.

I ask because I will be very surprised if she carries any far western or mountain state other than CA and HA, and she will have stolen it in CA. The primary was a dress rehearsal.

Including OR and WA. Don't forget that the PNW is ground zero for opposition to GMO and Monsanto, and Hillary is Monsanto's baby, to the tune of millions delivered to her campaign by the same operative who managed to shut down the anti-trust lawsuit which Eric Holder was at one time planning to bring against Monsanto. I would urge Sanders supporters in those two states especially to be contacting their superdelegate elected officials about voting for the candidate whom the voters chose. Clintons ain't the only people who can take names.

Meanwhile, I can't help wondering if former Gov. Johnson and his Libertarians might be bigger factors this year than anyone now realizes. You do remember that Cruz carried Utah. One more nudie photo of Mrs. T #3 coming out and I think it likely that Johnson might win in Utah, and possibly ID as well. If Johnson can remained centered on his natural western state base, avoiding the seductions of invites to the CFR and the like, if he can manage to portray the two major candidates as eastern elites who don't care about us, without insulting Trump supporters, he might could do very well in the west. He may have been saddled with Gov. Weld to prevent him from doing just that.

... on the same subject, written by Andrew Smolski, appeared last week in CounterPunch. I especially liked this bit:

Even odder about the retort that the Republicans are worse is that Chomsky says in a BBC interview that “in many ways [Obama] is worse” than Bush or Blair. He then goes on to list ways that Obama is worse, such as the escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan which was destabilizing Pakistan. This is the same Obama who Chomsky said was the “lesser evil” against John McCain. So, Obama is the lesser evil, but is more evil than 2000’s more evil Bush, when Chomsky was exclaiming that Gore was the lesser evil. We can only imagine how evil our LEV will be if this poor political strategy is allowed to limp along much more.

So it turns out that 2008's Lesser Evil was in fact more evil than 2000's Greater Evil. Funny how that works. It's like the yard markers keep getting moved down the field in a rightward direction, so that today's fire-breathing reactionary is tomorrow's sensible moderate, and today's moderate is tomorrow's craven peacenik appeaser.

I agree with the central point that Trump has no reasonable chance of winning under any realistic scenario, so the whole spoiler argument is completely ridiculous and non-applicable on its face. Truly, there has never been a better time or more compelling need to begin building a viable political entity outside the boundaries of the "two wings of the same predatory bird" duopoly. And perhaps more importantly, as Smolski persuasively argues, (allegedly) Lesser Evilism today will inevitably translate into Greater Evilism tomorrow. Less Evilism, period, is what we should all be striving for.

#ImWithJill

and read Chomsky. He pissed me off as he was right on about issues and what was wrong but he never ever purposed any solution to make the 'left' effective at organizing or stopping this shit. I just tuned him out at some point. Sorry, I know he is an icon of the left's intelligentsia but to me a ordinary prole he was just another liberal elitist ivory tower theorist posing as a leftist. No doubt a good linguist. I also was not impressed with Eugene McCarthy another ivory tower so called lefty icon. In other words to me this brand of lefties are part of the problem. I'm not surprised at all that he's joined the fear the Trump so called left. Shame on him he's not stupid he knows what's up.

I'm not buying it. What kind of a leftist hawks this illogical cowardice? Why use his linguistic skills to instill fear when it's obvious that lesser evilism is just double speak of the worst order. Give me Chris Hedges any day. He at least tells it like it is. Here a great article about the Trump v. Hillary con.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/con_vs_con_20160619
Con vs.Con

The liberal class refuses to fight for the values it purports to care about. It is paralyzed and trapped by the induced panic manufactured by the systems of corporate propaganda. The only pressure within the political system comes from corporate power. With no counterweight, with no will on the part of the liberal class to defy the status quo, we slide deeper and deeper into corporate despotism. The repeated argument of the necessity of supporting the “least worse” makes things worse.

This part of this excellent article sums up my disregard for a lot of the so called liberal left. Like Krugman when push comes to shove they bring it on home and play the game.

Liberals are employed by corporate elites in universities, the media, systems of entertainment and advertising agencies to perpetuate corporate power. Many are highly paid. They have a financial stake in corporate dominance. The educated elites in the liberal class are capitalism’s useful idiots. They are tolerated because they contribute, by discrediting the left, to the maintenance of corporate power. They do not think or function independently. And they are given platforms in academia and on the airwaves to marginalize and denounce those who do think and function independently.

Here's Hedges on the Democratic party and this farce of an election. I used to think Chris Hedges was too pessimistic about what is going down poltically. Not any more. He gives me hope at this point. I have seen with my own lying eyes what the Democratic party is about. Nothing I will give my consent to. I'm optimistic democratic change will come it may take awhile. When it does it will come from people globally who have had enough not from withing the complicit factions in the one party neoliberal state were living under.

The Clintons and the Democratic Party establishment are banking that the liberal class will surrender once again to corporate power and genuflect before neoliberal ideology. Bernie Sanders will be trotted out, like a chastened sheepdog, to coax his followers back into the holding pen. The moral outrage of his supporters over Wall Street crimes, wholesale state surveillance, the evisceration of civil liberties, the failure to halt the devastation of the ecosystem, endless war, cuts to Social Security and austerity, will, the Democratic Party elites expect, airily evaporate. They may not be wrong. Given the history of the liberal class, they are probably right.