He presents not one case where Biden would be worse, and even admits that he hopes Biden will win. He's just not going to "Play their game." Mr Hedges, that game is OUR game, and may determine whether some people survive the next 4 years or not, and under what state of fascism. Unwilling even to tap the rudder to the left or right, he hopes for a general uprising to break down the system through non-violence and civil disobedience. How likely is that to happen on a large enough scale, remain non-violent, and how likely is it to lead to progress vs regress? And with Trump still as President? Actually, I'm afraid I consider Mr Hedges himself part of the "botique" left, the ultra-left which is still very much among us (including some associates of mine and nearly half of the people I follow on Twitter) which refuses to take part in effective collective political action, in exchange for "personal" posturing (I appreciate Hedges' honesty in admitting over and over this is "personal"). This is not at all new, it never goes away, it is what communists like me call "trotskyism," and it leads only to more right wing victories (and many have theories it's financed by the right wing, as has sometimes been proven to be the case).
Chris Hedges, as a reporter, has a special privilege to not even to participate in an election. Indeed it might make it difficult to retain sources, etc. It's a conflict of interests. He could say flatly "I don't personally participate in politics, to remain non-partisan and objective." This is similar to what used to be the case for military officers. But he chose not to invoke his reporter privileges, and instead played out his useless and illogical political arguments for others to follow who are not reporters. Since he has chosen to "participate" in this way, counter-argument is warranted if not demanded.
Hedges was a Divinity student at Harvard long ago and finally ordained as an actual Presbyterian minister in 2015. He wrote a book condemning atheists including Richard Dawkins in 2008 (and condemning atheists was not new for him). As a Christian, he must believe in miracles, and only divine miracles, as our only hope. And also, according to a daring report by Christopher Ketcham, published in the post-Perez The New Republic, in a story that I find very convincing, plagiarism. Here is Hedges' response. I'm thinking I like Christopher Ketcham, his looks like daring reporting.
Hedges reported for the New York Times for 15 years. Could a real truth teller have done that in the first place??? Certainly the New York Times has never reported on war objectively. Now it is unlikely but not impossible that Hedges was not a party to their Manufacturing Consent bias. But even if he were not, he was contributing to it and allowing it to happen for a long time--and he would be in a position to know this.
Hedges' reports emphasized the ghoulishness of the Serbians (who were imperial enemies the US waged war against, specifically because of their alliance with Russia). Trotskyists frequently focus on criticizing imperial enemies, thereby enabling imperial wars. Trotskyist portrayals are idealist and lacking context and comparison.
So after a decade and a half enabling war at the Times by selectively castigating imperial enemies, he moves on to becoming a pompous and pretentious (actual reviews) Antiwar writer, while discounting the utility any progressive forces actually in government. Our only hope is a miracle (a good non-violent but sufficiently massive mass revolution). Is he organizing this, or merely praying for it? (See note 7 below.)
And then after himself enabling the rise of Donald Trump by denouncing Democrats generically and in particular for decades, he then moves on to blaming Democrats for Trump.
Meanwhile, I have little to complain about vetted reports by Chris Hedges, such as this one in Consortium News. I agree completely that the religious right is full of dangerous extremists who are getting more and more control of government. I only wonder, however, how much any variety of Christianity has done to oppose elite systems of power and wealth (of which, generally, it has been a part).
So Hedges' reporting can be factual, but his analysis may have blind spots. For analysis, since I first heard him in 2001, I'm going with Chomsky (just after my 3rd and last ineffective-vote), who reiterates that the lesser evil is the greater good.
In the past, Chomsky has suggested that in non-Swing-states, one could vote "conscience". However, in this election, we may not know what the swing states are, and it is no good to take any chances, especially having a President who has threatened to ignore the election and has many armed folks on his side. Trump needs to be denounced big at the polls.
Despite frequent libertarian or even not-a-Trumper posturing, when election day rolls around, Republicans know about winning. Only on the lefter side is there much ado about this.
Notes:
1. I am not disputing that we will need "miracles," or low probability events, to save us. This should not be surprising, as it appears a large number of low probability events led to our existence in the first place. The question is, how can we enable such miracles, or can we? Do we try to enable them ourselves, by moving, as best we can (imperfectly), toward what appear to be reasonable solutions using a scientific approach? Or do we focus on our own righteousness, including especially our faith in God, and leave the dirty work to God ?
2. I agree with Hedges regarding the utopianism of some atheists, including Dawkins. But as many reviewers point out, this is not generically true of all atheists. And then there is the particular kind of supernatural utopianism built in to Christianity that fills the same comforting role. Hedges uses a broad brush against atheists, not unlike the broad brush he uses against Democrats--he claims Bernie Sanders is a fake progressive water carrier for centrist corporate Democrats, a meme which has quite a bit of traction on the far left, and contributes to our democratic dysfunction. I see Sanders as doing nearly everything right, including especially withdrawing from the race as soon as it became clear he could not win. That was precisely what a good person should have done, but is now used to defame Sanders in far too many accounts I read endlessly on Twitter. And meanwhile, it seems to garner no fame for Sanders among Centrists either, who would say he should never have primaried Biden in the first place.
3. Given the design of the US republic, 3rd parties (often called splinter parties in Communist discourse) are worse than useless. The far left splinter party may help defeat the center right splinter party, and the far right splinter party may help defeat the center right party. And that's all. There is no magic ledger where the splinter party votes are applied to ongoing struggles in designing legislation. They are pretty much ignored after Election Day. Until a splinter party actually gets a member in Congress, the Presidency, or the Court, it has no substantive effect other than being a spoiler. Now, once in a great while, a major party collapses and may be replaced by a former splinter party. This does not happen often, and the chance of it happening this year are near infinitely small. If there were a reasonably credible chance a minor party could win and become the new major party, then and only then might it be worth voting for a splinter party.
4. Chomsky's fully objective and rational argument that the lesser evil is another way of describing the greater good remains absolutely true, despite endless subjectivist rants against it. While subjectivists will never accept this, their argument amounts to saying eh, I won't touch that slime. While that's not an unreasonable reaction, it is a completely wrongheaded on every other level. With a moment's thought, to save someone else's life, one may have to touch slime for awhile, and if it would save someone's life, we must do so.
Yes, indeed, even if the choices were Hitler or Mussolini, one should get out and vote if not campaign heartily for Mussolini for the sake of fewer deaths, if nothing else.
We are responsible of the consequences of our actions, including the relative badness or goodness of their outcomes. We are responsible for inaction as well as action, if the inaction were something any fair minded person could do, and would do in full examination of the likely outcomes.
The history of voting may not have accomplished much, but the history of non-voting, or non-effective voting, has not accomplished anything, and campaigns that encourage non-effective-voting may have done worse--such as bequeathing us some of our worst Presidents, including George W Bush--now retrospectively even being praised (in comparison with Trump) by Hedges himself. (My view is that GWB, the author of two major wars based on lies, was the worst US President ever, though there are many other bad examples, and even the best US President ever--FDR--was defective in very many ways, but still worth voting for every single time.)
5. I have myself many times failed to vote effectively. By strange coincidence, each time I did this the result far exceeded my worst expectations. I neglected to vote in 1980, and as a result we got the Reagan Revolution which finally upended the New Deal World I thought I was going to live in. I voted for (and gave some financial support to) Nader in 2000, and as a result we got the worst President in US history. That was the event which forced me to reach the conclusions Chomsky has always promoted. But even in 1996 I voted for a splinter party candidate instead of Clinton. And Clinton won anyway. But rather than reforming Clinton, pressuring him back towards the left, it seemed to bring out the worst in both Republicans and Democrats for the next 4 years, as if I had abandoned my chair at the table and a food fight ensued. Notably it was during his second term that Clinton finally destroyed the last two banking reforms of the New Deal era.
6. That made it clear to me. The way to make the political process better is through using it effectively for that purpose, including voting effectively, and also pressuring government effectively (which is one way of being a part of it). And effective means making material--even if small--changes for the better. That is never accomplished by walking away from the existing major political parties, unless in the process of creating a new major political party.
It's a worthwhile bonus, therefore, that participating with the lesser evil party almost certainly helps keeps doors open to influence it better. Affinity works better than disaffinity in politics, and life in general.
Given the opportunity, a person should even join a greater evil government if they believe they can influence it for the better. But that's not something we can expect any fair minded person to be able to do.
7. In organizing a revolution--for tomorrow--it is not possible to get far without participating in real struggles for the day. Getting some relief, however incomplete, through the lesser evil. Reform and Revolution are not incompatible, they are partners. This is the thinking of one of the most successful revolutionaries of all time: Vladimir Lenin.
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