of course, every word you utter is a moral judgment on gordon and anyone else who might think (what you think is) your coldly calculating amorality is wrong and immoral.
kelley
>Gordon,
>
>I expected to hear some noise for suggesting to myself that I actually
>vote and vote for the democrats, so that I had proper adversaries to
>combat. I would much rather argue with Brad, Nathan, and others
>here or in the streets on some issue that counts, than pick through
>the tide pool inhabitants from the other side. Those are the
>choices. Nader and others are not options---and I don't particularly
>trust Nader anyway.
>
>(For a tide pool field guide see the bibliography of Dances with
>Devils. I was just re-formatting it, pasting the sections together and
>looking through the lists.)
>
>In any case, the post was an experiment in how to construct an
>argument that did not depend on moral rectitude. If you consider
>voting not as a gesture of support for a policy agenda, but as a
>choice of enemies to combat, then that acknowledges it is a choice
>of devils in advance.
>
>By the way I am criminal, but one who has managed to avoid
>prosecution. I commit crimes every hour of every working
>day. Hopefully I am responsible for disposing unknown hundreds of
>thousands of dollars in federal, state and private healthcare
>insurance fraud, waste and abuse.
>
>Did you ever read `The Stranger'? In case you didn't, the hero commits
>two morally repugnant acts, one lesser, one greater. He falls asleep
>at his mother's funeral, and he shoots an Algerian on the beach,
>emptying his gun in the man. His excuse for murder was that the sun
>got in his eyes. The prosecution uses the first act to prove the
>callousness of the second in order to extract the death
>penalty. Meursault is convicted and waits to be executed for having no
>moral conscience or human feeling. He is estranged from a society
>based on the highest of moral principles, and to prove it, the society
>intends to kill him.
>
>Do you want to explain how not voting or voting for a candidate
>certain to lose upholds a moral principle, or how that might advance
>your positions?
>
>Chuck Grimes