The agonizing literalness of Lesser-Evilism
The agonizing literalness of Lesser-Evilism
At risk of beating the dead horse…
These god damn liberals keep harping over how Joe Biden is the “lesser evil” compared to Donald Trump, necessitating that we go out and vote for him come November lest our flawless democratic system give way to fascism. “Something something incrementalism purity test push him left do you want Trump to win???”
In 2020, it could be feasibly argued, if poorly, that Joe Biden was, in fact, the “lesser evil.” Donald Trump was the president, and Joe Biden was not. Given the dual assumption that Donald Trump was a “substandard” president and that Biden would likely be at least “standard” quality, this made some sense. But the cards are on the table now. All of our most fearful suspicions about a Biden presidency have been utterly validated, and that’s not even counting all the atrocities people scarcely imagined him committing or lacked the capacity to predict altogether. He is more evil than we could have possibly known.
All these same libs are now in a bind. Apparently, Biden HAS to be the Democratic ticket, so he HAS to be elected president, because otherwise Trump would win, and that would be bad, wouldn’t it? The only problem is that Biden, the Anointed One, quite literally has no redeeming qualities. So what do you do to convince people to vote for Biden in spite of literally every crime he has committed and every promise he neglected to fulfill?
The most popular strategy is seemingly to just insist, with zero supporting evidence or even reasoning, that Trump’s America is just an objectively worse version of Biden’s America. Everything will be worse under Trump. Everything. Yes, Biden has failed in almost every respect and has actively worked against what he promised to his constituents, and yes, nothing has improved under Biden and in fact almost everything has generally become worse, but Trump will do all those bad things even harder! So you have to vote for Biden. Or you’re making the world worse. You fascist.
At risk of being the Russian troll living inside everyone’s walls, can we take a moment to appreciate the degree to which the discourse has degenerated? “Vote for the lesser evil” used to mean that we were expected to make “compromises” with politicians we didn’t completely agree with or even took some issues with to avoid aggressive fragmentation within the Democratic Party, a sacrosanct institution representing all that is good in the world. This is perhaps the first election I’ve ever seen where we are not even being promised marginal progress. We are not even being offered different poisons to pick. The same toxic politics of the fascist right have been watered down by the “adults in the room,” and we are expected to not only drink but be thankful it’s not even more concentrated than it is.
Vote Biden 2024: It could be worse!
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I'm listening to age of Napoleon and am reminded of the period right after Oct 6 1789 where the liberals and bourgeoise were drafting the new constitution and celebrating unity at the feast of the federation, pledging oaths of unity and loyalty and stuff before the thing was even drafted. The liberals were happy with the reforms, but the working poor were disappointed they didn't go far enough, and the church thought they had gone too far. There were different factions within French society with completely different visions of the future. The narrator makes a point that these differences can't be papered over with oaths or fancy rhetoric, they have to be fought out, either with politics or violence.
This is where the us is at the moment imo only the political avenue has been completely closed off. It's not a matter of if but a matter of when, unless something meaningfully changes with our electoral system. Like redrafting the constitution level of change. Of course only violence would force this anyway.
In this context the election is truly meaningless and of course one can't help but find the whole thing tiresome. It is just delaying the inevitable, it literally doesn't matter
RevLeft just did an excellent episode on Marx's analysis of both Napoleon's and their relevancy to the current state of the US
Nice. Age of Napoleon has a short ep with matt christman as a guest covering that but it was only 30 mins so somewhat superficial, a deeper look would be very welcome, I'll have to check it out!