You can’t reason with lesser evilism in US politics. If you try, your eyes go crossed & your brain cells get scrambled into new configurations that make a hurricane look like a balmy day. It’s a peculiar form of cognitive impairment, hopefully sui generis to the US & the rest of the world has been spared, only because they have more worthless bums to choose from than two flanks of the same party.
It’s hell to go through every election when the range of candidates go from war criminals & thieves to the deranged–& lesser evil advocates can parse a significant difference. You can’t endure it if you don’t view their public statements as a low form of satire. Take Huckabee, for example. The list of his idiocies grows with every utterance but at least he expresses the racist & misogynist sewer that is his mind. Hillary Clinton postures as a populist while openly serving Wall Street & militarism & lesser evil voters don’t bat an eyelash when they defend her.
Truth of the matter is, most of the eligible US electorate don’t bother to register; those who do don’t bother to vote & the president is chosen by a minority of the misguided. Bernie Sanders is nothing but an operator using a cagey, though time-worn device to garner support for Clinton. In a speech in Boston in the 1980s, when he still had an ounce of political integrity left & wasn’t just a smooth-talking gasbag, he said the majority of people not voting could reflect good judgement about politicians; it could also reflect political passivity, a cynicism that goes nowhere. That might be the last time he had an original thought & didn’t just play populist.
Sanders was right in that Boston speech. The only alternative to lesser evilism is for US voters to recognize there are no saviors; populist rhetoric will not save the US from growing inequality & militarist destruction. We have to act on our own behalf to bring the changes necessary. When US voters & non-voters alike get off our leaden asses to affect change, that’s the dawning of a new day. Those people around the world being bombed by US drones or with bombs supplied by the Pentagon will at last see something worth respecting in the US.