I guess some of us have concluded that for this election the GOP alternative is so much worse than it has ever been, and so threatening to the country and thr world, that thsiu time the marginal advantage makes it worse actively supporting the useful capitalist slimebags. This is not an argument that one shoulda lways support the slightly better slimebags. In normal times, Bush I v. Clinton, the marginal difference did not seem to me to be great enough. But no-lesser-evilism is not a categorial imperative, it is a pragmatic guess about what will work out best. I would support Weimar against Hitler. I voted for Modale against Regan because I thought the Gipper was going to blow up the world. I don't think the country can easily survive another four years of unilateral imperialism, mad dog judicial appoints -- especially with Stevens in his eighties -- reckless spending, and pandering to the hard right unmitigated by any leaven. I canm think of nothing even remorely acceptable that W has done. So call me a sell out. When I get back to Chi, I'm volunteering for the Kerry campaign. jks
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Doug wrote:
>
> >How many times do I have to say "marginally better
> policies and a
> >better discursive and organizing environment"
> before it registers?
>
> Hasn't that _always_ been true, though, since FDR?
> That's an
> argument for ABR (Anybody But a Republican), not for
> ABB (Anybody But
> Bush).
>
> You complain of US activist culture mirroring "the
> pragmatic
> empiricism of the dominant culture," with few
> interested in works of
> such theorists as Bakunin, Marx, and Fanon (Liza
> Featherstone, Doug
> Henwood, and Christian Parenti, "'Action Will Be
> Taken': Left
> Anti-intellectualism and Its Discontents,"
> <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html>).
> It's no wonder,
> however, that pragmatic empiricism dominates
> activist culture, for it
> is _the_ philosophy of submission to the hegemony of
> the Democratic
> Party. You don't need any radical theory to keep
> supporting the
> Democratic Party empirically and pragmatically as
> the lesser evil.
>
> The Democratic Party = the Death of Theory.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Bring Them Home Now!
> <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, &
> <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum:
> <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine:
> <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio:
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
> ___________________________________
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