More thoughts on the lesser of two evils
A few posts ago—and I'm not going to go look for it—I mentioned how I was on a Discord channel with "true believers". I will always regret being sucked into that space, aside from what I learned about myself. And one of the things they would post was that "choosing between the lesser of two evils still means choosing evil." Meaning, of course, Joe Biden v. Donald Trump.
People who say this have never faced true evil. Oh sure, they think they have. They have BLM in their profiles. They rage about Gaza. But in their personal lives? No. They have jobs. They have money. They want for none of life's necessities. And because of this, they feel guilty. They have something with which I'm all too familiar as one who stutters: Survivor's guilt. Because they're doing well in contradiction to what their ideologies say, they must be more Roman than the Romans. They must be more revolutionary. They must be more radical. They must wish to tear down the System even more than people living in Nickerson Gardens.
Let's circle back to the "lesser of two evils", as it pertains to the contest between President Biden and Donald Trump.
I have said this: I'm not voting for Joe Biden as a lesser evil. I'm voting for him because he's a genuinely decent, kind, loving, and honorable man. Only those blinded by ideology not rooted in observed reality can say that Pres. Biden is evil. Only those lost in a maelstrom of their own making can at all equate Pres. Biden with Donald Trump. The two are not even in the same universe as concerns the nature of good and evil. Just this weekend Trump said that if he is not elected come November, there will be a "bloodbath". How anyone with any sense of morality can equate those two men in kind if not in degree baffles me.
As the graphic which heads this piece says: If you want to live, come with me. And Joe Biden was never the Terminator in the first film.
There is a puerility to our political discourse. On the right you have people who want to establish a thousand year Reich over those they see as untermenschen. And on the left there's a desire to punish those who don't see as they do, hoping this will engender the long-awaited "revolution". These are both the stances of spoiled children who have subsisted for too long on the doting of their peers that they are in the right, and everyone else in the wrong.
Life is too serious for this. Our existence as a species depends on the choices we make. Were I to snap my fingers would I wish for a Star Trek future? Of course I would. But here's the thing: that future was achieved through blood and death. Birth is bloody and difficult, and may result in death. It's not a sure thing. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. But that's not the imperfect, mortal world in which we reside. Nothing of note is gained by tantrums. Nothing of note is gained by mere demand. If it were, union members wouldn't have been killed, and civil rights protesters wouldn't have been beaten and jailed—and, yes, killed. I think of people like Bernie Sanders wanting to take over the Democratic Party without being a member of it. I think of the cheap, easy, and unworkable promises he made to his acolytes, and how that has poisoned the political discourse ever since. No Bernie, no Trump.
Holding onto this notion of the lesser of two evils is nothing but an expression of privilege. And the infuriating thing is that many of those who hold these views would see any privilege they have evaporate should the worst happen. That they can't see Joe Biden as a decent man who has spent three years wrenching this country and the world at large from the precipice of species-destroying barbarism makes a "normie" like me apoplectic. Their oh-so-ironic detachment is an arrow in the quiver of reaction. But they don't see it. They value their purity over all else.
Joe Biden is the man who can save us. He is the polar opposite of his adversary. And those who cavil about any number of things serve only to bring Trump's victory. And if, God forbid, Trump does win, the blood will be on their heads. For them I will have no pity.
***
Like what you're reading? Never miss another post! Get notified via email here.
Donate at the link below to keep us going.