Vote! A Broken Leg Is Better Than A Broken Back

Yesterday, I begged you not to vote for a Third Party, at least not just yet. Maybe in a few years, yes, we can work for a Green Party or a Social Democratic Party that can function at the national level. But right now, with Trumpian Fascists running the GOP, we have to support the Democrats, even if it requires holding our noses to do it.

I know that’s going to be hard for some of you. It is going to be hard for me, at times. But I just can’t forget a conversation I had with someone who didn’t vote in 2016, and acted as though it were a superior, moral choice. “Voting for a lessor evil,” he said, pompously, “is still voting for an evil.” He would not be sullied, he said. So, he stayed home on Election Day.

I haven’t spoken to him since then. I wonder how he feels about it, now. Does it feel so moral to have not voted for “corrupt Hillary” while Trump is throwing children in cages?

The simple fact of the matter, of course, is that “voting for a lessor evil” may, indeed, still be voting for an evil (and I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton was evil) but the important word is “lessor.” It may be that you have only two choices. You may have a broken leg. Or you may have a broken neck.

You don’t want either, of course. But it may be that those are the only two choices you’ve got.

Which will you pick?

If you’re sane, of course, you’ll go with the broken leg. And, well, it may be that you will be faced with a similar choice in the voting booth. You may have to choose between some party hack that you don’t much like…and a GOP candidate who is an overt Nazi or White supremacist.

Given that choice, if you’re sane, you’ll pick the broken leg.

You might think it is an evil, but it is an evil we can survive.

Which may not be true for the other selection.