Why the Greater Good requires Americans to vote for the Lesser Evil – Hillary Clinton

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THE CLAIM that “voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil” raises as many difficulties as it resolves. If we accept that society’s most intractable problems are a reflection of its most serious imperfections, then, surely, we must also accept that imperfect solutions are the best we can hope for? If the only choice presented to us is between inflicting less – or more – harm upon the world, then, surely, the only way for us to do any good is by deciding to do the least evil?

Simply refusing to choose between the greater and the lesser evil does not get us off the hook – not if our desire is to do the most good we can, whenever we can. If that is not our desire, then fine – we can just shrug our shoulders and walk away.

But, presumably, the very fact that we find choosing between (in this case) Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton so frustrating is because we have a vision of the United States that neither candidate is willing to fulfil completely. Like progressive activists all around the world, we want a socially-just, ecologically-sustainable and peace-making America. How likely are we to see that America, however, if the best advice we can offer our American comrades is to simply throw up their hands in exasperation and cry “A plague on both your houses!”?

Yes, you could argue that given the evident corruption of the Republican and Democratic parties, the best way to do good is to encourage American progressives to build a new political party. And you might be right – but it doesn’t solve the problem of what to do now. A genuinely progressive and thoroughly organised third party is not going to be on the ballot-paper on 8 November!

Then, again, you might say that voting for one of the minor party candidates is the best way of doing good. Except that, as John Oliver’s latest Last Week Tonight show so brilliantly demonstrates, the Libertarian’s Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein are complete flakes, whose grasp of what the US President can and cannot do is as woefully inadequate as Trump’s.

Nor will it do to simply declare that since New Zealanders don’t get to vote in the 2016 US Presidential Election, the choice between Trump and Clinton is one we can, mercifully, avoid. But, if we take it upon ourselves to judge and condemn these candidates (and boy do left-wing Kiwis love to judge and condemn these candidates!) then it seems entirely gutless to refuse to make the imaginative leap into an American polling-booth and choose.

Not that the choice is all that difficult – not really.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Yes, Hillary Clinton is more Hawk than Dove when it comes to US foreign and defence policy. And, yes, like so many “mainstream” Democrats, she is not above taking donations from her friends in Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. But what she is not, is a bloated, foul-mouthed racist and misogynist, who, thwarted in his grandiose ambitions (quite possibly for the first time in his entire life) and facing imminent defeat, is preparing, like some narcissistic parody of Samson, to pull down the temple of American democracy upon the heads of its fractious citizens.

The socially-just, ecologically-sustainable and peace-making America we are all hoping for is unlikely to be fully realised under President Hillary Clinton, but a great deal more of it will be brought into existence under her leadership than under Donald Trump’s.

In an imperfect world, the imperfect solution is to vote for the least-worst presidential candidate. For the greater good, American progressives are morally obliged to choose the lesser evil – Hillary Clinton.

66 COMMENTS

  1. Is she though? Sure Trump is a nasty chauvinistic misogynist, but does that make him “evil” per se? I think we’re possibly losing sight of the forest for the trees here. Hillary is PROVABLY corrupt and has PROVABLY caused all manner of death and destruction in her wake. There isn’t a war she hasn’t supported in the 30 years she’s been a politician. Add to that she’ll inherently feel the needs to show she “has balls as big as any man” so that the Middle-East are forced to take her seriously despite being a woman (who they have zero respect for) is a dangerous combination. WWIII is more likely under Hillary than Trump imo, just based purely on track records (of which Trump has none and deserves the benefit of the doubt imo). Hillary isn’t simply “a lesser of two evils” she’s a “known evil”. There is a difference.

    • Some excellent points raised there .

      ” Add to that she’ll inherently feel the need to show she “has balls as big as any man” so that the Middle-East are forced to take her seriously despite being a woman (who they have zero respect for) is a dangerous combination. ”

      And this just might be the clincher.

      As may be for her attitudes towards Putin.

    • Provably? She did 8 years as First Lady, 8 years as Junior Senator for New York and 4 years as Secretary of State. In other words, 16 years with zero power, then 4 with delegated power, during which time 90,000 troops were pulled out of Afghanistan and more pulled out of Iraq. She did support dissidents in Libya when it appeared they were sitting ducks as Gadhafi’s army closed in on them. I bet you cheered her on at that point of the “Arab Spring”. And continued to do so until it all turned to blood and custard. She may be a flawed candidate but when she resigned as Secretary of State she had 66% approval in the States, for what that’s worth.

      It was only after the Republican Nihilism Machine set their sights on her about 18 months ago that her popularity went down the gurgler in a fire storm of overstated faux-outrage about those damned emails.

      So back Trump, Nitrium, and good luck to you.

      For everyone else, you have the same real-world compromises to make a little closer to home.

    • Gilad Atzmon expresses it best.
      By Gilad Atzmon

      The question regarding the meaning of Trump is unlike questions concerning the person of Trump or what the Republican candidates stands for.

      The meaning of Trump is that, pretty much, half of the American people say enough is enough. Half of the American people are expressing a total fatigue of the system and their ruling elite.

      In the last few weeks we learned that Trump left behind a score of offended women. He was disrespectful and grossly misbehaved, allegedly. This may tell us something about who Trump is; yet the fact that all those embarrassing revelations had zero impact on Trump’s popularity suggests that we are dealing with a force of nature. No one else in modern politics would have survived a fraction of such bad publicity. Trump may be a horrid and disrespectful human being, and yet, he appears to be invincible.

      Trump is not as eloquent or as lucid as Hillary Clinton or President Obama but he manages to express in a just a few words the deepest and most profound philosophical ideas and criticisms of Western life. It was Trump who reminded us, once again, that true utopia is in fact nostalgia. Trump’s campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is probably the most profound existential rejection of the progressive delusional mantra. It is an essentialist admission that the prospect of a better future is actually rooted in the past, in the soil, in manufacturing and agriculture — pretty much the few things from which Wall Street’s mammonites were happy to divest.

      Trump hinted in the last debate that he may challenge the result of the US presidential election if he loses. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” is how he phrased it. Once again, Trump is not a philosophy graduate, yet, he manages to unleash an existential viper into the room.

      Secretary Clinton and President Obama were appalled by the man who doesn’t adhere to the great American democratic tradition. They were probably correct. Trump, puts into question the entire American or, more accurately, Western paradigm. Democracy is not sacred to him – it is a means rather than the end.

      Like the vast number of his followers, Trump believes that America and its democracy are currently rotten. American democracy is set up to serve its own oligarchy. It conveys the image that the dystopia in which we live is a product of our ‘free (democratic) choice’.

      While Clinton and Obama communicate persuasively within the symbolic order, Trump manages to revolutionize the discourse constantly. This is a quality that is usually associated with the artist and the Athenian spirit not with real estate moguls.

      But does Trump really mean what he says? Is he genuine or is he playing a game. No one knows. But far more interesting, no one really cares and it doesn’t really matter. And this is probably the real meaning of Trump.

      Donald Trump is merely a vehicle. It doesn’t really matter whether Trump will be the next president or not. The call for a radical social change has been established. It is now becoming aware of itself.

  2. America was founded on betrayal, land-theft, genocide, resource plunder and slavery, and morphed into a fascist police state long before Mussolini even invented the term, arguably in the 1870s but most definitely from the time of the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

    ‘Elections’ are complete travesties geared to manufacturing consent for manipulation and control of the populace by ‘the real owners’ (as Carlin describes them), the banks, corporations and pseudo landed-gentry who emerged during and after the American Civil War.

    To pretend America is a democracy is to ignore the facts of history. America is effectively a corporation, with all the structures of a corporation and all the goals of a corporation.

    Clearly, neither of the presidential candidates has the interests of ordinary Americans people at heart, and either will ensure the trajectory that leads to complete collapse is maintained.

    Under such circumstances, what is the point of voting? The difference between driving off a cliff at 95km/hr and driving off a cliff at 100km/hr?

    ‘The socially-just, ecologically-sustainable and peace-making America we are all hoping for’

    The concepts of socially justice and ecological sustainability are not compatible with the concept of civilization or even the concept of a nation in the modern sense of the world: modern industrial nations are TOTALLY dependent on consumption of fossil fuels and the conversion of them into carbon dioxide, and in the case of American (and many other western nations) the acquisition of other nation’s fossil fuel resources by force. All modern industrial nations, including NZ, are totally dependent on sacrificing the future to maintain present living arrangements just a little longer, and all will continue to sacrifice the future in order to maintain present arrangements until they can’t. (Atmospheric CO2 now 402 ppm and will be 412 ppm, or more, next year.)

    Pre-European-contact living arrangements are the ONLY form of human society that was ever sustainable, and ‘no one’ will vote for a return to non-industrial hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

    As for ‘peace-making America’, that is a fantasy which is completely at odds with America’s history. America has been at war for most of its history:

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-years-since-1776.html

    And America will continue to do what has worked in the past -manipulate and control via force- even though it is a recipe for catastrophe in the present.

    See ya’ll at the bottom of the cliff.

  3. It is not really the greater evil that matters, but the most relevant evil. The quality of Trump presidency would be determined by how he handles the economy, foreign affairs, etc., not by his attitudes to women, or other races. I think I would be more worried by his lack of experience than by his alleged misogyny or racism.

    I think Americans are in danger of being influenced by things of peripheral importance.

    • Agreed, it was interesting to read the comments of one of the female ‘ deplorable’s ‘… and as she stated about some of Trumps comments ” Men talk ,- but so do women” … in other words , to that group , many overlook Trumps past and even present social statements .

      What that group is focusing on is past the gaffes and the dirt digging and looking at a bigger picture.

      Incidentally , its also interesting that certain among the Clinton campaign professionals have been caught out rigging and instigating physical altercations at Trump rallies… which in turn casts a less than savoury look on not only their subversive politicking tactics but also on many of the claims made by the Clinton camp about Trump.

    • Sexism and racism are of “peripheral importance”? Careful Mike, your white male privilege is showing. Put it away.

    • If I were a woman living in the USA I’d be very afraid of a Trump presidency. Reduced access to healthcare and more restrictions on abortion would directly affect my life. His attitude to women would also mean that my access to justice in the instance of sexual assault, abuse or domestic violence may also be further curtailed.

      Not things men think about much though are they.

      But if you’re a woman, these things bloody are not “peripheral”.

      And that right there may well be why there is such a big gender divide in support of Trump vs Clinton. Men just don’t seem to see how central, not peripheral, these issues are to our lives!

  4. I have just been to America recently and noted many people walking around wearing black T shirts emblazoned with large white writing the words , “we are the deplorables .”
    Clinton might win with her ‘wall street money’ but America is going to become more and more unstable either way.
    Noticing also that every 2nd to third person was seriously seriously overweight , (where was Obama in implementing hard hitting measures to rectify that epidemic from spreading), you can safely say America is stuffed and on the decline. Self destructing before their eyes.
    A short little burst at Supremacy in the overall scheme of things.

    • CLINTON = WAR AND DESTRUCTION SO BUILD YOUR NUCLEAR WAR BUNKER NOW AND STOCK FOOOD IN IT AS SHE WILL PUSH THAT BUTTON FOR SURE.

      AS SHE WILL BE TOLD TO BY THE ELITE WHO WANT A THIRD OF US ALL INCINERATED.
      ITS PART OF AGENDA 21 FOLKS.

      Plans are underway now, implemented by the New World Order Elite, to depopulate the planet’s 6-7 billion people to a manageable level of between 500 million and 2 billion.

      http://rense.com/general64/pordc.htm

    • Trump will bring war too. Why do you think he plans to spend billions on the military?

      “The plan includes raising the number of active Army troops from 475,000 to 540,000, raising the number of Marine battalions from 24 to 36, expanding the naval fleet from a planned 280 to 350 and adding more Air Force fighter aircraft to at least 1,200.

      He has also said he’ll modernize missile defense and cybersecurity, and ask his generals to present, within 30 days of taking office, a plan to defeat ISIS.

      To pay for the expansion, Trump said he’ll ask Congress to lift the so-called “sequester” spending caps that were enacted in the Budget Control Act of 2011. That would add roughly $450 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.”

      http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/08/heres-the-bill-for-trumps-military-buildup-plan.html

    • Paul, if you’re meaning a war on women, ethnic minorities, and muslims, you might be right.

      If that’s not what you mean, then why not? Because that’s who Trump seems to be targetting in his hate-speeches.

  5. What planet are you on? Hillary Clinton will have this planet at war the day after she is elected. Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt and evil person ever to stand for the office. She should be in prison. She is a globalist puppet and with their desire to go to war to cover up their total mismanagement of the global financial and desire to eventually cause it’s destruction, she will willingly comply with their every wish.

    Trump is a sexist, racist, megalomaniac, loose canon, but from what I can find so far in research he is not a globalist. This makes him less of a danger to all of our existence than the totally criminal and psychopathic Clinton.

    I am much more afraid of what Clinton has DONE than what Trump has SAID!!

    • Crissie, isn’t that what they said about Hitler? That what he SAID prior to 1 September 1939 didn’t really mean anything?

      Hitler said plenty about the Jews and people took very little notice until it was too late.

      I’m not equating Trump with Hitler, but be careful about apologizing for the statements made by a bigoted, sexist, racist candidate prior to election.

      If you think he won’t go through with it now, will he go through with it later?

      If a sexist, racist, lying bigot is the best alternative to Clinton, then what does that say about our priorities??

  6. Trump represents everything detestable about American culture. Clinton represents everything detestable about American government

  7. They’d make a nice couple looking at that picture. They could take out their frustration with each other in private. So “we” don’t have to put up with this mind-numbing bullshit!

    Advice for Trump in days debate. Go Full Retard! On Bills History every time Billary mentions anything to do with the sexual allegations! Innuendo and all!

  8. Why do I get the feeling that some people are buying into the Republican orchestrated “crooked Hillary” rhetoric?

    • Because she is.
      Because wikileaks are loaded down with ‘crooked’ carry on.
      Because of her actual track record.
      Because of that inconvenient wee thing called ‘reality’.

      • have you been inhaling alex jones there..?..siobhan..?

        is he one of yr ‘trusted-sources’..?..

        ..and as for wikileaks..assange/dotcom etc. have done themselves no favours with their vows to destroy clinton – and thus give the election to trump..

        ..they would never be forgiven if they did that..

  9. Neither candidate is preferable but if I was a voting Murican I would vote Stein. Hillary Clinton is the puss that fills the boil on the edge of the asshole of America.

  10. Neither candidate is preferable, if I was a voting Murican I would vote Stein. Hillary Clinton is the puss that fills the boil on the edge of the asshole of America.

  11. Sorry Chris, I disagree, but that’s my privilege. Clinton and trump are as bad as each other, just in different ways.
    Maybe the US of A-ians could create a precedent and have them joint-president. They’d be so busy fighting each other USA might just get left in peace enough to get themselves sorted.
    Maybe that’s another candidate for a Tui billboard.

    • The single greatest threat to the United States (and the world) is climate change. Those aren’t my words the CIA said that. We haven’t seen this level of species extinction since an Astoria wiped out the dinosaurs only this time we are the asteroid.

      That makes every republican nominee the most dangerous group on the planet because they actively deny climate change and oppose every piece of climate legislation. Never mind any other policy, we must look past the personalities and choose a party on this one issue because climate change is no joke.

      I found out that if the republicans lose the senate, Bernie Sanders becomes Chairman of the Budget committee which is huge! Massive. A position perhaps more powerful than the president in some respects and on its own enough to vote Hillary and democrats.

  12. John Oliver didn’t prove that Jill Stein was a complete flake at all. Below is Stein’s response to Oliver’s comments:

    “Coming from someone who made a stunt of buying and canceling medical debt on his show, and who claims to want alternatives to the failed two-party system, this disingenuous attack on the idea of canceling student debt is both puzzling and hypocritical,” Stein’s campaign said in a statement. “It was beyond disappointing to see that our responses were completely ignored. The same tired, misleading attack lines were trotted out, and Oliver chose to misrepresent our campaign on the lone substantive issue that he addressed: our plan to cancel student debt.”
    In Sunday’s episode, Oliver said Stein’s plan to eliminate student debt relies on an economic method called quantitative easing, which is essentially the printing of new money. The problem, Oliver said, is that the Federal Reserve doesn’t have the jurisdiction of the president. “It’s basically akin to saying, ‘I’ll make us energy independent by ordering the Post Office to invade Canada,'” Oliver said. “No, Jill. That’s impractical, it’s a terrible idea, and you don’t seem to understand anything about it.”
    Stein’s statement countered: “Oliver singled out canceling student debt via the Federal Reserve, implying both that this was our only option and that it would be technically impossible. In reality, experts say that it is technically possible, even if politically difficult, for the Fed to play a role in student debt forgiveness. And Oliver simply ignored the fact that we had other proposals to cancel student debt on the table.”
    Stein’s statement concluded: “In Iceland, the bankers who destroyed their economy are in jail. In the USA, they are laughing at us from country clubs and yachts” and that the Green Party would “clean house” if elected. “Don’t waste your vote on this failed two-party system, invest your vote in building a movement for deep systemic change,” Stein’s campaign wrote.

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/jill-stein-responds-to-john-olivers-deceptive-attack-w445611

  13. Fortunately, the Democrat Party had to deal with the Bernie Sanders insurgency and their party platform contains some impressive acknowledgement of that- it supports lifting the federal US minimum wage and linking it to the US inflation rate, a cause championed by Sanders. It provides increased access to rural health care and lower prescription drug prices, but stops short of universal access to Medicare, the US public health insurance system. It supports corporate corruption law reform, the expansion of Social Security welfare provision and the abolition of capital punishment, all Sanders goals. Union organising rights, collective bargaining rights and a living wage are all significant concessions to Sanders trade union backers, although the American Federation of Labor-Combined Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO) have always been strong Democrat supporters. It doesn’t contain a fracking ban, nor does it commit the Democrat Party to opposing the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership, but stresses that the latter will need to incorporate stronger workers rights and environmental protection clauses. The party is also committed to national decriminalisation of cannabis, recognising the inevitable

  14. It is most interesting to seethe majority of commenters appear to disagree with you Chris.

    I think they’re correct.

    You describe Trump as a chauvinistic and misogynist but in reality these are just the slogans of the PC Police. They are not substantive issues.

    If I was an American (I shudder at the thought!) I would put Trump’s policy of securing its south border ahead of any claims of racism. Hillary’s backers like undocumented illegals pouring over the border because it undermines American wages and society has to soak up the damage done in terms of unemployment, crime and drugs. He is more a nationalist than a racist in my view.

    Compare that to the career criminality of Hillary:

    White Water
    Payment for Pardons
    The Clinton Foundation
    Pay to Play
    Haiti aid
    The emails scandal
    Benghazi
    The fraud of the DNC party nomination
    Recent evidence of voter registration fraud

    So we’re comparing a charmless buffoon whose intentions appear reasonable to a career criminal who has successfully perverted the course of justice for decades.

  15. Jill Stein, flake? What on earth is that supposed to mean ?

    Hillary is the darling of Goldman Sachs , of several billionaires including the Israeli-American Haim Saban who says his only issue is Israel , of the military corporations. Hillary thought Gaddaffi’s assassination was a great joke.

    Jill Stein is the ONLY candidate who, as President, would take on the bloated military corporations & thus be able to finance social needs. She is the only candidate who wants a foreign policy based on international law and human rights.
    And yes, she is the Greater Good candidate. Unfortunately not just for Americans, but for the whole world, she was denied the right to take part in the presidential debates by the Commission on Presidential Debates which sets the rules and which is controlled by officials of the Democrat and Republican Parties.

  16. How Much did The Clinton Foundation pay you to write such utter dribble Chris?? – please disclose?

    [Slippery. I came very close to deleting your comment. Please be very careful with your accusations (or in this case, accusatory questions) in future. – ScarletMod ]

  17. SCARLETMOD
    Is it new practice now for TDB to request name, email and website before accepting comments?
    Thanks

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