Today, we rant.
British satirist Laura K of Normal Island News recently published a rollicking piece on US politics called “US hopes to replace worst president ever with worst president ever.” That about sums it up. Right after the Democratic National Committee had, with the assistance of its sycophant media outlets, destroyed the Sanders challenge to its left, we were left with a choice in 2020 between Biden and Trump. I characterized this in a reaction piece (no longer available since Medium shut me down for saying that someone born with male genitalia cannot become a woman) titled “Choosing between two pieces of shit.” Ritual denunciations, however satisfying—as personal catharsis or in-group virtue signaling—are insufficient reasons for standing aside from the American political shitshow.
I wrote a piece back in September making a very provisional case for nominating the questionable RFK as the Democratic contender (and he would undoubtedly beat Trump, in part because of his most questionable positions), but the DNC and its media employed its whole bag of smears and dirty tricks to nip that in the bud. RFK is out of the Primaries now; and the fact is that the choice is going to be Biden or Trump—a half-senile, warmongering (and now genocide-supporting), lifelong corporate groupie (this describes a fair portion of the shitshow US Congress) . . . and a rapey malignant narcissist slash career criminal who’d like to be called Il Douche.
Now I know all the “moral” arguments. If you vote for Biden, you’re co-signing the Israeli’s genocidal attack on Gaza, nuclear brinksmanship in Ukraine, and the DNC’s legendary dishonesty and hypocrisy. This is, of course, not a moral argument at all, but at best the naive personalization of actually existing American shitshow politics, and at worst self-righteous virtue-signaling as an excuse to sit on the sidelines untouched by the shit from the show—which means you probably have nothing to lose whereas others actually do.
The fact is, Trump might pull out of Ukraine then wage his own undeclared (and direct) war on Iran, and he’d be even more supportive of Israel’s genodical aspirations against Palestinians than Biden. As to election interference—of which both parties are consistently guilty—let’s not forget that, regardless of what can be proven through the legal system (which seldom holds rich people to account for anything), Trump really did try to overturn an election in an incompetent putsch attempt—disingenuously manipulative and batshit crazy arguments to the contrary notwithstanding.
Modern capital-M “Morality,” as philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once said, is so incoherently fragmented that we don’t know whether we’re Kantians, utilitarians, or contractarians. This has left us with the study of “ethics,” presented as quandaries between these three modern approaches which most of us hold simultaneously with zero awareness of their utter incompatibility with one another. My approach—which is MacIntyrean—is about virtue (as opposed to virtue signaling), defined as making one’s decisions based on (1) good character development and (2) as full as possible a grasp of the context in which one makes ethical decisions.
Character and context.
On “good character development,” I’ll risk taking a stand against the prevailing liberal contention that right and wrong are a mere matter of personal bias. Good character is integrity and an unselfish regard for others expressed as good will which takes into account the larger common good. It’s expressed in actions that are thoughtful and moderated by a sense of balance between things like justice, courage, prudence, humility, patience, and so forth. On grasping context, this is that thoughtful part ^^^ wherein one actively seeks to understand all the factors at play with regard to making a decision; this would include the willingness to examine one’s own premises, predispositions, and prejudices as part of making just, courageous, prudent, humble, and even patient decisions, then acting upon them.
The situation we find ourselves in—one intentionally sustained by the Archons of the American political shitshow—is the anological hybrid of a protection racket and a hostage-barricade situation. The Democratic National Committee, sponsored by Wall Street, AIPAC, the military-industrial complex, and the technocratic PMC retainer class institutions, has positioned itself such that they really are the only viable alternative—since the Sanders challenge was defeated—to the once-Republican Party, now fully owned and operated by the rapey malignant narcissist slash career criminal who’d like to be called Il Douche. If anyone sees any real alternatives—no, RFK and-or Cornel West are not real alternatives—give us a heads-up.
Sure, you can “vote your conscience” by refusing to give your vote to Biden et al, because you don’t want to “co-sign” their crimes. That is a very individualistic decision (one I’ve taken in the past, to my shame), and one that does not take into account what are the likely consequences of putting the rapey malignant narcissist slash career criminal who’d like to be called Il Douche back into the Oval Office. Those consequences would not improve, but worsen, the really really shitty political context within which we are the “mob-protected” population . . . or, in the other analogy, hostages.
Part of taking into account the context of ethical decisions should be—and here’s the moral ought connecting to to the contextual is—honest and humble acknowledgement of the ways in which we are currently powerless. I can make this case as a MacIntyrean virtue ethicist; but I could make the same case (voting for the vile-ass Democrats to stop the vile-ass Republicans) using Kantian, utilitarian, and contractarian arguments as well. A rare ethical confluence, and an important one.
Beating our breasts in cyberspace from our tablets and to our 300 “friends” about how “I won’t bow down for this,” or likewise virtue-signaling that “I’m throwing X under the bus if I co-sign this with my vote,” is not basing one’s actions or even his or her rhetoric on the realistically attainable common good, even when that common good is in retreat.
What we’re talking about—in the real world—is triage, damage control . . . not risking the lives of the other, more vulnerable hostages.
Our American shitshow political choice is between (a) an inhumanly horrible and dangerous foreign policy and an indirectly authoritarian domestic policy run by motherfuckers with HR degrees, and (b) an inhumanly horrible and dangerous foreign policy and an directly authoritarian domestic policy run by one colossally ignorant and mercurial megalomaniacal motherfucker who’ll keep the country at each other’s throats as a way of consolidating his power to rule by (mercurial!) fiat. This choice is not desirable, but there it is.
As I am wont to do, I’ll retell a bit of my military experience that corresponds to American shitshow politics quite closely. In the military, ever since it was taken over in the late sixties by the former CEO of Ford, commands from lowest to highest are short-term. It’s an up-or-out program, which means that every two to three years, every troop is going to get a new commander, one that rose in a system where he or she had to please the next commander up the line—making every commissioned officer to one degree or another a careerist politician. In the American shitshow political system, we have cycles of money-fixed elections where “command changes” when candidates fail to effectively work the dialectic between donors and the current prejudices and panics of an ill-informed electorate. In neither case do these systems produce optimal results. In the Army, I remember all of us perpetually complaining about these politicized commanders. As people tend to do—privileging contemporary experience over the past—we would say things like, “This asshole is the worst commander we’ve ever had.” Then there would be changes of command, whereupon we were about fifty percent of the time proven dead wrong.
It can always get worse. Write that on the back of your hand. It’s part of that context thing.
What the powerless do—or if I can return to my military experience one last time—what weaker forces do, is what they have to for survival, no matter how unpalatable, while they work out a longer game.
Trump is 78 years old and he has a hard time wiping his own ass. Biden is 81 and he trips over cockroaches. I’m not being mean. I’m 72 myself, no spring chicken, and I fall, forget shit, and experience about fifty mystery twinges a day. My skin is so thin you can see my bones without an x-ray, and I spend five minutes taking a leak. That’s life, y’all. I’ll be tickled pink if I can make to 81. My point is, the best you can hope for right now, by all reasonable accounts, is to deny Trump in 2024. By 2028, Biden will be ineligible, and Trump will be trying to grab the nurse’s ass who’s changing his diaper. We boomers, as a voting population, will be shuffling off this mortal coil in greater numbers, we’ll have four more years of climate destabilization, financial crisis, and wars as a background, and maybe—just maybe, if we can find candidates who take the interests of most plain people seriously without stupid fucking culture-war contaminants—someone can successfully knock off the Democratic gerentocracy the way Trump did the Republican one.
Meanwhile, as Laura K might say (apologies if I’m being presumptuous), let’s make sure we re-elect the worst president ever to make sure the worse worst president ever . . . never ever gets back into the White House, and let’s take down his political cult with him. That is actually do-able.