Paul, I don’t see how anyone with an ounce of empathy for the victims of the ongoing genocide in Gaza would consider voting for Harris. I don’t see how anyone could justify voting for any Democrat this fall. I certainly will not.
Harris is just a VP. She has projects assigned to her, but running foreign policy is not one of them. I'm sure she has both public and private views of the situation, but in that position one is limited as to what one can reasonably say and do. She is in no way a "free agent" with complete autonomy to disagree with Biden or to set in motion another policy (even though she may privately think otherwise--and who knows what she thinks privately? We certainly don't.)
So I agree with the other person who replied. However you may hate militarism--and Harris does believe in it--that's been the course of every president for the most part since since Kennedy. But remember--the Dems are in the midst of a very tough election with unprecedented things happening. She has to appeal to the masses. All leaders say a bunch of stuff for internal consumption when they are under a lot of pressure as she certainly is right now. Just think of the presidential alternatives. Sitting at home and not voting doesn't do anybody any good. There are millions of voters who do that, and that's why elections are so close and constrain the candidates as to what they do and say.
Absolutely not; I think my note was misunderstood. I don't like what Harris is saying, or what Biden is doing, but being an armchair critic is futile. I'll take the lesser of two evils--Harris--as I have done many times before. The Dems have not groomed anyone else for the post. If Adolf gets in, as he keeps saying, maybe it'll be unto death. Scary!
not sure how large a sub set of us voters will not be voting for either Dems or Repubs and what subset of the subset will not vote at all or vote 3rd party or do a write in. I hope this subset of folks is large and we make a differance. What that difference looks like?? who knows??
both parties horrific when it comes to their waring unempathetic sociopathic genocidal ways. This has to stop it must stop,,,,NOW
Jimminy. I find the pearl-clutching voter comments cynical and demoralizing. I say vote if you feel! Or not! Then go do something that is moral, useful, and matters: Help others urgently organize for revolution. Do small things or big things, whatever able.
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
the government is not in control, ugly corporations, investors the military industrial capitalists, banking, war profiteers, no privacy, and the military, police, spy agencies in the government.
These are my concerns. If I was much younger than 80 I could participate in the revolution but I cannot, with my physical and cognitive capacities so diminished.
There is absolutely nothing that friends, foes, or family could say to me that would get me to vote for a Democrat in this upcoming election. I am a 77 year old, retired public schoolteacher, and this genocide has left me with no desire to pull the lever for a Democratic candidate. As chief Joseph might say, I will vote Democratic no more forever. George Hunter.
Paul, I like and agree with much of your independent thoughts. I've been using the quite apt Lenin quote on time myself. Perhaps if you follow through with its implications you might consider that you're being somewhat premature as there are more than seven weeks to go. I find myself leaning towards comrade West but feel it is too early, given that this "hurricane" season just getting started.
Even giving the author the benefit of the doubt regarding the six factors for not voting Harris-Walz, the strategy of "not-voting" accomplishes the opposite of what is desired to happen. What does a "non-vote for Dems" really mean? Sitting it out at home? Choosing some 3rd party candidate and getting a repetition of the year 2000 debacle? (I guess Nader might like that choice). It is not the case that choosing the "lesser-evil" tactic this time entrenches that strategy; it is already entrenched and has been practiced for many election cycles in the past already. Each go-around produces endless commentary about this mode of coping with the "quadrennial extravaganza" where each party/candidate has numerous faults and deficiencies and none is overwhelmingly liked.
In "one-party," non-swing states, one can be reckless and fling one's vote about any which way. But if one is living in a crucial swing-state, than that luxury is not available if one is to be rational in one's choice. Experimentation with third parties, and the disruption caused by them in these few cases, is crucial to a nation-wide outcome, a situation which the author has criticized innumerable times as being a great weakness of our electoral system. But that's the reality today, and there isn't going to be any revolutionary attempt to alter it this time around, or anytime soon. The mass electorate is not going to go into "revolutionary mode" anytime soon.
The Dems' convention demonstrates how "conventional"--not in the least "revolutionary"-- all those former chiefs of state and celebrities are. I was really shocked when I did not hear the word "fascist" even one time, but I didn't listen to it all. How often was "Project 2025" mentioned? Hardly at all? Maybe once or twice? How much was the public apprised of the threats and dangers that await them from candidates and party who want to demolish whatever is still left of this democracy? (I suppose they were carefully watching their speech so as not to be accused of "political violence." They certainly could not have used the themes of this author as a basis for a public, political speech; such a speaker would never have been allowed on stage.)
However "evil" it might be to go along, the same conditions/reasons about aborting and preventing a Republi-fascist victory hold now as they did in 2020, even more so since we now have a greater organization of the far-right and a written agenda called Project 2025 which was absent four years ago. The necessity now of preventing a right-wing win/coup, I would say, is even greater than before, necessitating lesser-evilism and anything else which might work. Trump is dedicated to dismantling the system and subverting the Constitution (with all its faults), so how could he even take the oath of office to "support and defend" that same document? A total contradiction.
One problem I have with the author's continuing narrative is that much of it is in the nature of opinion. And opinions are judgments, and judgments have limitations. By no means is their universal agreement about the future outcome of some particular foreign policy, or what some rogue leader might have done had some other geopolitical decision been made some number of years ago, and so on.
So I find the author's continuous and profound cynicism not very helpful and even demoralizing. Calling everything "BEB" and such does nothing useful and produces nothing useful. Tens of millions of people are not going to be marching in the streets all over America. And even when there were demonstrations during the preparatory stages of the Iraq invasion--in many countries--those demonstrations were ignored and maligned by the leaders in power at the time and did not serve to change the main political decisions for that invasion, and those demonstrating were ridiculed by all the media at the time. (And if you ask the perpetrators even today, they would still maintain the rightness of their cause and continue justifying it. Even brilliant commentators, authors and social critics like Christopher Hitchens was one of them.)
Many authors criticize the decisions regarding the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict. This being an election year obviously influences that and maybe many other related decisions as well. Why should the Dems sacrifice the Jewish vote? According to some polls, about 30% of the Jewish vote is already lost to the Repubs. The four states with the biggest Jewish vote constitute about 127 electoral votes. Who wants to lose more of those? The other side of the coin is the sacrifice of the Arab vote which is mainly in Michigan, I'm guessing a far lesser loss. These are, in part, pragmatic decisions. I'm sure it's not a pleasant process either. Virtually none of us is privy to how these sorts of decisions are made or what the various considerations are. All we can do is sit back and play arm-chair politician and issue our limited judgments. And continue to trouble our souls about so many things we have little or no control over.
I read MK's comment. I imagine that many I know who live in contested states are going to mark presidential ballots for Harris. They are free to cite my work on Trumpism-Republi-fascism in making the case for voting for Harris. I don't vote-shame. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'll take (A) the person who does the tactical LEV thing via the BEB (with its insane Minority Rule aspects including the Electoral College, the absurdly powerful and malapportioned Senate, states rights, and lifetime appointed Supreme Court all on top of the campaign finance madness and corporate media and the the other ways in which capital runs the show) for two minutes but who then gets right back to actual revolutionary activity/movement-building over (B) the third party ballot fetishist who reduces politics to nothing more than voting. Give me (A) every time. These words I find disturbing in MK's comment: "But that's the reality today, and there isn't going to be any revolutionary attempt to alter it this time around, or anytime soon. The mass electorate is not going to go into 'revolutionary mode' anytime soon." Four problems there in my view: (1) revolutionary moments have always at first been quite surprising to those who experience them. Avakian explains why at least one of his three prerequisites for such moments is in place--- remarkable splits/division in the ruling class and below (after all one of the two dominant parties has gone fascist); (2) As Sunsara Taylor says, if we don't go to revolution "we're fucked" - just an existential and scientific fact relating above all to the climate catastrophe (but to other horrors as well) in my view (the growing menaces of our time simply cannot and will not be solved underr the capitalist system - not even a sliver of an iota of a hint of a wisp of a chance of that); (3) many decent and intellectually inclined folks' deepy ingrained pessimism/"realism" about the possiblity of what Dr King called "the real issue to be faced - the radical reconstruction of society itself" becomes a negative material force in history and can be a self-fulfilling prophecy (I find it borderline suicidal); (4) the reduction of the masses/the people/the populace/the working class majority/the citizenry or whatever you want to call the broad mass of US humans to a corporate-managed "electorate" is to me a serious intellectual, political and moral mistake.
Paul, I don’t see how anyone with an ounce of empathy for the victims of the ongoing genocide in Gaza would consider voting for Harris. I don’t see how anyone could justify voting for any Democrat this fall. I certainly will not.
Harris is just a VP. She has projects assigned to her, but running foreign policy is not one of them. I'm sure she has both public and private views of the situation, but in that position one is limited as to what one can reasonably say and do. She is in no way a "free agent" with complete autonomy to disagree with Biden or to set in motion another policy (even though she may privately think otherwise--and who knows what she thinks privately? We certainly don't.)
So I agree with the other person who replied. However you may hate militarism--and Harris does believe in it--that's been the course of every president for the most part since since Kennedy. But remember--the Dems are in the midst of a very tough election with unprecedented things happening. She has to appeal to the masses. All leaders say a bunch of stuff for internal consumption when they are under a lot of pressure as she certainly is right now. Just think of the presidential alternatives. Sitting at home and not voting doesn't do anybody any good. There are millions of voters who do that, and that's why elections are so close and constrain the candidates as to what they do and say.
So you will either vote for Trump or one of the fringe parties that doesn’t have even a remote chance at forming a government
Absolutely not; I think my note was misunderstood. I don't like what Harris is saying, or what Biden is doing, but being an armchair critic is futile. I'll take the lesser of two evils--Harris--as I have done many times before. The Dems have not groomed anyone else for the post. If Adolf gets in, as he keeps saying, maybe it'll be unto death. Scary!
not sure how large a sub set of us voters will not be voting for either Dems or Repubs and what subset of the subset will not vote at all or vote 3rd party or do a write in. I hope this subset of folks is large and we make a differance. What that difference looks like?? who knows??
both parties horrific when it comes to their waring unempathetic sociopathic genocidal ways. This has to stop it must stop,,,,NOW
Jimminy. I find the pearl-clutching voter comments cynical and demoralizing. I say vote if you feel! Or not! Then go do something that is moral, useful, and matters: Help others urgently organize for revolution. Do small things or big things, whatever able.
To tell the truth is revolutionary.
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
-Antonio Gramsci.
What about most people are cowards
the government is not in control, ugly corporations, investors the military industrial capitalists, banking, war profiteers, no privacy, and the military, police, spy agencies in the government.
These are my concerns. If I was much younger than 80 I could participate in the revolution but I cannot, with my physical and cognitive capacities so diminished.
You are participating because you tell the truth. It is valuable.
There is absolutely nothing that friends, foes, or family could say to me that would get me to vote for a Democrat in this upcoming election. I am a 77 year old, retired public schoolteacher, and this genocide has left me with no desire to pull the lever for a Democratic candidate. As chief Joseph might say, I will vote Democratic no more forever. George Hunter.
Paul, I like and agree with much of your independent thoughts. I've been using the quite apt Lenin quote on time myself. Perhaps if you follow through with its implications you might consider that you're being somewhat premature as there are more than seven weeks to go. I find myself leaning towards comrade West but feel it is too early, given that this "hurricane" season just getting started.
Even giving the author the benefit of the doubt regarding the six factors for not voting Harris-Walz, the strategy of "not-voting" accomplishes the opposite of what is desired to happen. What does a "non-vote for Dems" really mean? Sitting it out at home? Choosing some 3rd party candidate and getting a repetition of the year 2000 debacle? (I guess Nader might like that choice). It is not the case that choosing the "lesser-evil" tactic this time entrenches that strategy; it is already entrenched and has been practiced for many election cycles in the past already. Each go-around produces endless commentary about this mode of coping with the "quadrennial extravaganza" where each party/candidate has numerous faults and deficiencies and none is overwhelmingly liked.
In "one-party," non-swing states, one can be reckless and fling one's vote about any which way. But if one is living in a crucial swing-state, than that luxury is not available if one is to be rational in one's choice. Experimentation with third parties, and the disruption caused by them in these few cases, is crucial to a nation-wide outcome, a situation which the author has criticized innumerable times as being a great weakness of our electoral system. But that's the reality today, and there isn't going to be any revolutionary attempt to alter it this time around, or anytime soon. The mass electorate is not going to go into "revolutionary mode" anytime soon.
The Dems' convention demonstrates how "conventional"--not in the least "revolutionary"-- all those former chiefs of state and celebrities are. I was really shocked when I did not hear the word "fascist" even one time, but I didn't listen to it all. How often was "Project 2025" mentioned? Hardly at all? Maybe once or twice? How much was the public apprised of the threats and dangers that await them from candidates and party who want to demolish whatever is still left of this democracy? (I suppose they were carefully watching their speech so as not to be accused of "political violence." They certainly could not have used the themes of this author as a basis for a public, political speech; such a speaker would never have been allowed on stage.)
However "evil" it might be to go along, the same conditions/reasons about aborting and preventing a Republi-fascist victory hold now as they did in 2020, even more so since we now have a greater organization of the far-right and a written agenda called Project 2025 which was absent four years ago. The necessity now of preventing a right-wing win/coup, I would say, is even greater than before, necessitating lesser-evilism and anything else which might work. Trump is dedicated to dismantling the system and subverting the Constitution (with all its faults), so how could he even take the oath of office to "support and defend" that same document? A total contradiction.
One problem I have with the author's continuing narrative is that much of it is in the nature of opinion. And opinions are judgments, and judgments have limitations. By no means is their universal agreement about the future outcome of some particular foreign policy, or what some rogue leader might have done had some other geopolitical decision been made some number of years ago, and so on.
So I find the author's continuous and profound cynicism not very helpful and even demoralizing. Calling everything "BEB" and such does nothing useful and produces nothing useful. Tens of millions of people are not going to be marching in the streets all over America. And even when there were demonstrations during the preparatory stages of the Iraq invasion--in many countries--those demonstrations were ignored and maligned by the leaders in power at the time and did not serve to change the main political decisions for that invasion, and those demonstrating were ridiculed by all the media at the time. (And if you ask the perpetrators even today, they would still maintain the rightness of their cause and continue justifying it. Even brilliant commentators, authors and social critics like Christopher Hitchens was one of them.)
Many authors criticize the decisions regarding the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict. This being an election year obviously influences that and maybe many other related decisions as well. Why should the Dems sacrifice the Jewish vote? According to some polls, about 30% of the Jewish vote is already lost to the Repubs. The four states with the biggest Jewish vote constitute about 127 electoral votes. Who wants to lose more of those? The other side of the coin is the sacrifice of the Arab vote which is mainly in Michigan, I'm guessing a far lesser loss. These are, in part, pragmatic decisions. I'm sure it's not a pleasant process either. Virtually none of us is privy to how these sorts of decisions are made or what the various considerations are. All we can do is sit back and play arm-chair politician and issue our limited judgments. And continue to trouble our souls about so many things we have little or no control over.
I'll wait for Paul's response to this. Would you want to be president? Do you actually think if you were you could make these changes?
I read MK's comment. I imagine that many I know who live in contested states are going to mark presidential ballots for Harris. They are free to cite my work on Trumpism-Republi-fascism in making the case for voting for Harris. I don't vote-shame. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'll take (A) the person who does the tactical LEV thing via the BEB (with its insane Minority Rule aspects including the Electoral College, the absurdly powerful and malapportioned Senate, states rights, and lifetime appointed Supreme Court all on top of the campaign finance madness and corporate media and the the other ways in which capital runs the show) for two minutes but who then gets right back to actual revolutionary activity/movement-building over (B) the third party ballot fetishist who reduces politics to nothing more than voting. Give me (A) every time. These words I find disturbing in MK's comment: "But that's the reality today, and there isn't going to be any revolutionary attempt to alter it this time around, or anytime soon. The mass electorate is not going to go into 'revolutionary mode' anytime soon." Four problems there in my view: (1) revolutionary moments have always at first been quite surprising to those who experience them. Avakian explains why at least one of his three prerequisites for such moments is in place--- remarkable splits/division in the ruling class and below (after all one of the two dominant parties has gone fascist); (2) As Sunsara Taylor says, if we don't go to revolution "we're fucked" - just an existential and scientific fact relating above all to the climate catastrophe (but to other horrors as well) in my view (the growing menaces of our time simply cannot and will not be solved underr the capitalist system - not even a sliver of an iota of a hint of a wisp of a chance of that); (3) many decent and intellectually inclined folks' deepy ingrained pessimism/"realism" about the possiblity of what Dr King called "the real issue to be faced - the radical reconstruction of society itself" becomes a negative material force in history and can be a self-fulfilling prophecy (I find it borderline suicidal); (4) the reduction of the masses/the people/the populace/the working class majority/the citizenry or whatever you want to call the broad mass of US humans to a corporate-managed "electorate" is to me a serious intellectual, political and moral mistake.