Weighing The Lesser Of Two Evils In A Broken System

 

I keep going around and around about who is the greater evil and I keep landing on the Democrats. I know, it’s not an obvious choice, but anyone willing to look at things honestly has to at least consider the idea.

 Consider for example, Trump’s willingness to attack the U.S. Postal System. It seems utterly evil and stupid. And it is, though the extent of it or the veracity of it I admit I have yet to determine. That made me swing towards considering him the greater threat. But as I was considering this I was doing a YouTube search and was becoming frustrated with my inability to find the exact clip I wanted. Search engines used to be so much easier to use.

 Then it occurred to me how manipulated search engines have become as a result of the cries to enforce censorship coming from the Democrats under the guise of Russian interference. I was typing in “Russian bounty Nikko House” and all I was coming up with were videos from major corporate news outlets covering the Russian bounty story. It was not until I rearranged the words that I was able to find the Nikko House clip I wanted.

The point is, if you weren’t specifically looking for the clip, you never would have stumbled upon it. All you would ever see is what major corporate media permits you to see, and their take is vastly different from non-sanctioned perspectives. If you do not simply accept one of the two accepted positions on any given issue (Republican or Democrat), you will find it difficult to find alternative voices. And if you have a different take on any given issue, you will find it extremely difficult for your voice to be heard. If you speak out against war or imperialism, it will be harder still. And if you are critical of Israel in any way, expect to be marginalized more than if you were promoting violence and hate.

Censorship at this moment is very real and it is getting worse. And the blame for that can be placed clearly in the lap of the Democrats. I hear no one on the Right calling for clamping down on non-sanctioned voices.

“But,” Democrats say, “the right to vote is being impeded by Trump’s attacks on the Post Office, which is one of the most sacred foundations of our Democracy.” To which I agree, both in regards to the wrongness and the degree of harm inflicted by Trump’s behavior. Trump is very bad, Trump is very wrong.

But of the two, the attack against our first amendment rights is at least on par with what Trump is doing. And nobody in the liberal left is saying anything about it, and if they do they are actively encouraging it. Russian interference is the pretext. Silencing dissent against U.S. foreign policy is the reality.

Which would make it a toss-up, each side being approximately as harmful to our country, Trump threatening our democratic elections, Democrats threatening free speech.

Except the Democratic Party has been making a travesty of our elections as well. Well before the first primary votes were cast, there was a full court press to delegitimize the progressive wing of the party. Vacuous candidates like Beto O’Rourke were given nothing but positive press while Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders were smeared when they were not simply ignored. When Gabbard’s debate performance prompted voters to make her the most Googled candidate, Google suppressed her ads.

And then there was the cancellation of the Iowa polls before the Iowa Caucus. Followed by an even more bewildering inability to actually determine a winner. Followed by further problems actually tabulating votes in other states. Followed by changing the rules determining who would be in the debate after Tulsi qualified for the debate. Followed by more shenanigans than I can now remember, but culminating in an orchestrated maneuver to have all remaining centrists suspend their campaigns while Elizabeth Warren stayed in to syphon off progressive votes from Sanders. Oh, and let us not forget the ridiculously long lines voters had to wait in while polling stations were being closed in the midst of a pandemic.

So the Democrats are at least complicit in voter suppression and keeping any meaningful change from taking place. They are more actively involved in internet censorship. In four years, they have done nothing to oppose Trump in what I most care about. They’ve applauded Trump when he’s been most militarily aggressive and gone to his right to attack him when he’s failed to warmonger sufficiently. In most issues that matter to me, Democrats have either mirrored Trump, supported Trump, or else been to the Right of Trump.

There is one last matter to consider. Trump is an individual, whereas the Democratic Party is an establishment. The Trump movement is a cult of personality doomed to disintegrate the moment the man either becomes too old or falls from favor due to his own incompetency. The Democratic Party has the potential to remain a problem indefinitely. Not tied to one individual, it is capable of shedding its failures with a given candidate and using another empty vessel to promote the agenda of a powerful elite. So even if Trump were Hitler, I don’t view him as being as dangerous as an undemocratic power that uses secrecy and censorship to push the agenda of the military industrial complex. If comparisons of Trump to Hitler can be made, then comparing the Democratic Party and the forces it protects to The Gestapo, or at least Joseph Goebbels, is not beyond the pale.

So if forced to choose, there is a very real case to be made that Trump is the lesser of two evils, though granted he is the more odious of two presidential candidates.

But this is of course a foolish discussion to have. When given two absolutely unacceptable options, the only logical response is to insist upon a third one. When a system gives you no way to change the system, it’s time to stop playing by the rules the system has laid down. And the system will not bring about the kind of change we require. It will never give you the tools you need to change things. The system will not give you the option of changing the system.

You ask me what the alternatives are. It doesn’t matter what suggestions I give you, you will not accept them until you are willing to admit the two options you are given are insufficient. For now, I can only tell you that I am not buying either one of them. I’m sorry this does not fit into the paradigm you’ve been led to accept. But smashing that paradigm is going to be necessary if we are ever to achieve the meaningful change we need.

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