If you’ve got 10 minutes or so to spare today, you could do worse than to watch this portion of an interview with Noam Chomsky from a site called The Real News.com:
If you don’t have the time or the inclination to sit through the video (10 minutes seems like an ETERNITY in Internet Time), you can read the transcript instead here on their website (scroll down through all the mostly-inane comments and you’ll find the transcript)
Chomsky and the interviewer use a clip of George Will making what they call a “rather candid” statement:
George Will: Surely in a democracy it’s time for us to stop being sentimental and say the question we settle in an election is not whether elites shall rule but which elites shall rule. (emphasis mine — BK)
This particular observation certainly isn’t new, though it might be the first time a conservative media figure like Will has ever said as much publicly. Indeed, Chomsky has been making this basic point for decades: the American political establishment is not really made up of two differing ideologies, but one single ideology with two warring factions who differ only slightly in their affiliation with external politico-economic powers in American society. Despite the populist rhetoric of today’s Republicans and yesteryear’s Democrats, neither party is particularly interested in the plight of the average citizen except as an electoral strategy. At this stage in our history, I think you’d have to be utterly stupid, deliberately ignorant, or totally disengaged from reality to argue this point, whether it comes from the mouth of Noam Chomsky or George Will.
What Chomsky says that seems a bit less characteristic of his usual rhetoric, though, is that even though our current presidential election is really nothing more than a choice between two very similar and generally disappointing candidates, there is merit in voting for the “lesser of two evils” (meaning, in this case, Barack Obama) because in the long-term the average citizen fares better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones.
That’s about as close to an endorsement as any presidential candidate is likely to get from a figure like Chomsky. He does undercut his own remark by explaining the all-too-close similarities between McCain’s stated policies and Obama’s stated policies, and at one point he comes right out and says that he thinks that Barack Obama will not live up to his own rhetoric:
Well, I would suggest voting against McCain, which means voting for Obama without illusions, because all the elevated rhetoric about change and hope and so on will dissolve into standard centrist Democratic policies if he takes office.
But he concludes the segment with this thought:
Nevertheless, there is some difference and you have to make a choice. If you’re in a swing state, you have to ask: is this difference enough for me to pick the lesser of the two evils? And there’s nothing wrong with picking the lesser of the two evils. The cliché makes it sound like you’re doing something bad, but no, you’re doing something good if you pick the lesser of two evils. So is it worth doing that? Or is it worth trying to act to create a potential alternative? For example, should I vote Green because maybe someday their party will be a real alternative? Should I express my disdain for the right-wing orientation of both parties by not voting, let’s say? Or should I pick the lesser of the two evils, thereby helping people? Okay. That’s a decision people have to make.
Personally, I am not comfortable voting for the lesser of two evils. John McCain is simply unacceptable as a potential President of the United States, and his running mate is unacceptable in ANY elected office. But despite the bandwagon parade of newspaper endorsements and the eloquent-but-questionable endorsement from Colin Powell, Barack Obama represents nothing more than the same status quo that brought us to this lowly state of affairs. Choosing between these two candidates is like choosing between being mauled by a man-eating tiger, or being slowly digested by a python; picking the python means it might hurt a little less, but it’s going to last a whole lot longer.
One underlying problem is that our electoral system and our limited view of politics leave most people with the feeling that elections must be an either-or proposition, and create all sorts of rationalizations for voting for a candidate people would really do better to vote against but feel they have no choice if they oppose the other guy even more. It doesn’t really have to work that way. Though Canada uses a parliamentary government, they do, in fact, have FOUR national political parties (well, okay, maybe the Bloc Quebecois isn’t all that national, but they hold a lot of seats in Parliament), and most European nations have proportional voting systems that make for far more diverse political choices than the de facto binary system we have.
So even at this late date, it is my resolve to write in Dennis Kucinich’s name on my presidential ballot. It’s not a “protest vote”, it’s my sincere consideration that he would make a better President than either John McCain or Barack Obama. Kucinich continues to champion the genuine cause of progressive government where Obama and McCain simply pay lip-service to the serious issues facing the American public regarding health care, foreign policy and civil liberties. Kucinich was one of the few members of the House to vote against the $700-billion bailout, was one of the few to propose an alternative to the Paulson plan, and last week called for a probe to be launched into the $70 billion in bonuses being paid out to Wall Street executives even as their companies fail. He continues to fight for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, consistently opposed the PATRIOT Act, and has proposed a universal health care bill that is superior to anything offered by McCain or Obama. As I’ve said here before, the media portrayals of Kucinich as a “loony” are unfair to his record and have cost him serious consideration during the Democratic primaries in two election cycles. Since I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstance and cannot in good conscience vote for Barack Obama at this critical juncture in American history, this is my honest and sincere choice.
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Rather than make a new post for it, here is an interview with Howard Zinn from The Real News.com which largely echoes Chomsky