Opportunism, Obstinacy, and Opting-Out: The Cult of the Lesser Evil
>There is a hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner element to Biden’s approach to Israel that some in Gen Z can’t fully grasp. His politics are that of a Cold War Democrat, and a Northeastern one at that. Support for Israel is part of his liberal DNA, no matter the prime minister. Jewish voters, Irish ones, Italian, too — that’s the coalition. It’s a matter of principle, sure, but also domestic politics. But they’ve not heard of the “Three Is” on TikTok.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/04/biden-third-party-peril-00139380
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stupidity, logic, and the Cult of the Lesser Evil
this article plays the blame game in an enlightening way. Gen Z is blamed for not understanding that this is the hand they've been dealt—for being obtuse enough to assume that fundamental power of negotiation, the willingness to cut their losses and walk away from the table in hopes that by damaging their near enemy relative to their far enemy, they can again a stronger position later in the election cycle or four years from now. this is the fundamental shibboleth of modern liberalism, at least during the Trump era, when democracy is on the ballot, every ballot: I will not play politics, I will only subsumes my political capital to the sovereign will of the Lesser Evil, not because of any inate qualifications, but by virtue of it's position relative to Trump.
meanwhile, Biden and his team are not being portrayed stratigically inane so much as tactical. they are protrayed as old, inept, slow to advertise on TikTok, too formal or principled or weak chested to talk up what little restraint Biden has placed or pretended to place on the Netanyahu regime. it's all very The West Wing, it's all very How Dare They, don't they know that we (by our own design) are all that can stand between them and Trump.
I say, better the enemy we can rally against then the false friend ratcheting us ever rightward. Vote for West, or Stein, or spoil your ballot. The foundations of the Democratic party are rotten, the load bearing institutions of this foul empire have been so thoroughly corrupted that to purge them would bring the whole edifice crashing down. the current order cannot long stand. recession can only be delayed, the next large scale hot war can only be deffered. The chess pieces are being divided up—will India and Brazil hold to NATO against China and Russia? Will China run the table in Africa, can the EU be wedged further from America? Will the House of Saud keep it's powder dry or will it pull the western powers into an open contest with Iran?
I do not know. what I do know is that we cannot waste these days. now is the time to prepare, to build the institutions which can push back on the tide towards catastrophe, and which might bouy us in the crises of climate, displacement, dispossession, and fascism already underway. we must build dual power, our own base and institutions and stockpiles and supply lines which will not dry up at so regular a disaster as the loss of an election or the overturning of this law or that rulling. find those who are organizing to resist and outlast the prevailing order of things: it cannot last long now, and what comes next could well be worse. find networks of resistance and v redundancy against the powers that be. open space for them to rest and recuperate and evolve and send out runners. carry word of their possibility to to every abandoned lot and spiderwebbing crack in the concrete slab called empire. cast their seeds there. make them grow.