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Monday, October 01, 2012

But Will The Purity Trolls Listen?

I'm so big a fan as I probably am supposed to be, but Chomsky's pretty right here:

Professor Chomsky said he will probably vote for Jill Stein for president in effort to push a genuine electoral alternative, but that if he lived in a swing state he would vote “against Romney-Ryan, which means voting for Obama.”

We also discussed the relationship between tactics and action. Speaking about Occupy Wall Street's public encampments, Professor Chomsky, who supported OWS and authored a book on the subject, said such tactics have a half-life and that when one tactic stops working, activists have a responsibility to try something else.

Idealism and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive.

ntodd

October 1, 2012 in Conscience, Pax Americana | Permalink

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Chomsky's voting plans for the Brown/Warren race would be more interesting...

Posted by: Snarki, child of Loki | Oct 1, 2012 11:07:03 AM

Idealism and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive

But they are most often meant to be.

Posted by: cahuenga | Oct 1, 2012 12:36:55 PM

The real choice in the presidential election is between Obama and Romney. I don't much like Obama but he is enormously less bad than Romney. Given that real choice and that there will be real consequences if Romney wins, there is nothing idealistic about risking his election. With the relatively fresh experience of Bush v. Gore race of 2000 and the subsequent eight years, including two horrible wars, environmental destruction, two horrible Supreme Court appointments, etc. anyone who would risk Romney's election is anything but idealistic, they are delusional.

Reality is real, one of those two will really be president next year. Jill Stein never will be. The Greens are a make believe party with a less than clean past. They've acted as spoilers on behalf of Republicans in some races, they have never, in their more than a quarter of a century, elected anyone to an office higher than the one state legislator they elected in Maine and he lost his next election as Greens concentrated on their fourth-place finish in the governor's race that year. Greens will never go anywhere in the U.S. They have a less successful record than the old Socialists did.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | Oct 1, 2012 1:04:54 PM

Let me echo everything Anthony McCarthy says above... and add that once years ago, in my capacity as an officer of the local group of a nationally known environmentalist org, I had occasion to interview a lot of candidates for local office, including some Greens. I regret to say that most of the Greens were unable to answer the simplest questions about significant current urban environmental issues, or to persuade me that they had a clue about how to run a political campaign. They may be admirable people, but their primary role has been that of spoilers on behalf of the political Right. I may be part of the disaffected Left of the Democratic Party, but I'm damned surely not going to throw away my vote on any political incompetent.

I do agree with Chomsky that it makes a difference whether you live in a swing state. Texas is very, very red; I could safely vote Green here. An Ohioan could not. But as I'm doing my best to change things here, I shall vote for Obama.

Posted by: Steve Bates | Oct 1, 2012 10:05:07 PM

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