Voting should not be viewed as a form of personal self-expression or moral judgement directed in retaliation towards major party candidates who fail to reflect our values, or of a corrupt system designed to limit choices to those acceptable to corporate elites.- The exclusive consequence of the act of voting in 2016 will be (if in a contested “swing state”) to marginally increase or decrease the chance of one of the major party candidates winning.
- One of these candidates, Trump, denies the existence of global warming, calls for increasing use of fossil fuels, dismantling of environmental regulations, and refuses assistance to India and other developing nations as called for in the Paris agreement, the combination of which could, in four years, take us to a catastrophic tipping point. Trump has also pledged to deport 11 million Mexican immigrants, offered to provide for the defense of supporters who have assaulted African American protesters at his rallies, stated his “openness to using nuclear weapons,” supports a ban on Muslims entering the US, and regards “the police in this country as absolutely mistreated and misunderstood” while having “done an unbelievable job of keeping law and order.” Trump has also pledged to increase military spending while cutting taxes on the rich, hence shredding what remains of the social welfare “safety net” despite pretenses.
- The suffering which these and other similarly extremist policies and attitudes will impose on marginalized and already oppressed populations has a high probability of being significantly greater than that which will result from a Clinton presidency.
- [The previous point] should constitute sufficient basis to voting for Clinton where a vote is potentially consequential — namely, in a contested, “swing” state.
- However, the left should also recognize that, should Trump win based on its failure to support Clinton, it will repeatedly face the accusation (based in fact), that it lacks concern for those sure to be most victimized by a Trump administration.
- Often this charge will emanate from establishment operatives who will use it as a bad faith justification for defeating challenges to corporate hegemony either in the Democratic Party or outside of it. They will ensure that it will be widely circulated in mainstream media channels with the result that many of those who would otherwise be sympathetic to a left challenge will find it a convincing reason to maintain their ties with the political establishment rather than breaking with it, as they must.
- Conclusion: by dismissing a “lesser evil” electoral logic and thereby increasing the potential for Clinton’s defeat the left will undermine what should be at the core of what it claims to be attempting to achieve.
—Noam Chomsky
An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting)
Writing is unnatural for humans. What we are good at is speaking. And that is why we so often get messed up when writing and why there is a whole subculture of people who get their kicks out of noticing errors. Some people thrill to see a self-published book that starts with a “forward” rather than a “foreword.” In matters grammatical, I feel very much the way I do in the Democratic primary: I do take a side, but I’m very sympathetic to the other side. Let us consider, for example, the phrase “just deserts” — meaning deserved consequences.
So what’s up with “just deserts”? Well, when the word “desert” entered the English language around the 13th century, it did it in two ways. First, there is the desert that we all know from nature shows, but generally try to avoid. It comes from the Latin word desertum, which means roughly wilderness. And it comes from an earlier Latin word deserere, which means leave. It is where we get the soft e-sound as in “edible.”
Sometimes it’s difficult to conjure a clear memory of US political life before Donald Trump. But one of its most salient oddities was that the establishment elite considered it crass (if not outright slanderous) to suggest, in ideologically mixed company, that only one of the two major parties drew upon the support of bigots for political power.
Almost ten years ago, 
Most Americans have never heard of donor-advised funds and would be surprised to learn that, measured in donated dollars, the second-most-popular “charity” in 2015 (just behind the United Way) was not the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, or Harvard or other universities. It was Fidelity Charitable, an organization created and serviced by Fidelity Investments for the purpose of holding charitable donations. Fidelity Charitable acts as a middleman, attracting its customers’ charitable donations and managing them in separate client accounts. Money in such donor-advised funds is invested and held until the clients give instructions (“advise”) about distributions to operating charities.
Okay, I rail against grammar pedants around here a lot. But there is something that drives me crazy. Here’s an example, “Besides medical care, Shady Brooks also offers a free euthanasia program.” But I’ll bet that almost no one sees the problem with this sentence. Certainly the many professional writers I work with don’t — despite my explicitly telling them about it. The problem is that “also” is redundant.
The UK, by its own volition, has been the route of austerity… They voted for it themselves. You know, similar outcomes, not as bad as you`ve seen across the eurozone [eg, Greece, Spain], still their economy`s not been great. Most people have very little to show over the last eight years, nine years. You`ve had cuts in public services. National Health Service has been a big issue. People are talking about older people. Older people need health care.
I had a brief interaction with Ramona Grigg at 
The second of two Bernie Sanders camps are those who really do want a political revolution. I like them. I salute their idealism! But far too many of them have bought into tired lies about the Clintons brought to you by the Conservative Book Club in the 1990s. I’m pretty sure this comes after the idealism. It is a natural reaction to vilify whoever stands in the way of your noble goals. So it’s understandable but not acceptable.
The English language is in a dreadful mess. It always has been and always will be. That is its great splendor. At least since the arrival on our shores of a ruling class who spoke a different tongue from the common poeople, glorious civil war within the language has been a permanent condition.
We think about society all wrong and that is nowhere as clear as our thinking on the issue of education. Hillary Clinton brought out a plan yesterday to make college far more affordable, and I am largely in agreement with 
The Talmud tells a story: the reason God covenanted with the Jews was that they were the only ones who were willing to take the deal.
I’ve noted it many times, but it bears repeating: you know someone’s argument is nonsense when its justification keeps changing. I most associate this with conservatives. But the truth is that as the Democratic Party moved further and further to the right over the last 40 years, we’ve seen a lot of the same thing from liberals — especially when it comes to trade policy. And a great example of it came from The Very Definition of Liberalism Himself™, 