Apologia

I am about to drop off of social media for a while.  The political conversation on these platforms has reached the point where I could spend all my time and vital energies “swatting flies”, one by one.  And my annoyance with the repetitive shallowness of today’s political dialogue has been causing me to un-follow too many people I like – in calmer times – and to block more than a few.

So here, in this space, I will post my reasons for voting third-party in this election – probably not for the last time, but in terms of my recent response to a well-intentioned fellow Bernie supporter who has decided to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Here, with some editorial changes, is what I wrote:

“You, sir – with many others – have made this argument.  Rather unendingly, if I may say so.  First, I heard it from ardent Hillary backers, lecturing Bernie’s supporters (as early as February) that the nomination contest was ‘over’ and that it was time to ‘come together’. 

“Now we have reached the season when you and other erstwhile Bernie supporters – those who are Democrats or who can, at least, stomach the continuation of the present two-party system – will read the same lecture to their former comrades-in-arms.

“You may succeed with some, even most.  You will never succeed with me because – as a lifelong student and long-time teacher of history – I tend to take a longer perspective.  I don’t worry about every election as though everything turned upon it.  Rather, I look at the long arc of our national conversation.

“Since my first presidential vote, in 1972, Democrats have been successfully frightening voters with the boogey-man of the latest Republican candidate:  Nixon; Reagan; G. W. Bush; McCain (or really, Palin).  I even recall, as an adolescent, the remarkable fear campaign waged against the “war-monger” Barry Goldwater – by LBJ, of all people.

“And of course, Republicans have been using fear tactics to turn voters away from Democratic candidates for just as long.

“Here’s my problem:  The logic of voting for the “lesser of two evils” has – for my entire adult lifetime – assured that the present two-party system survives intact, without serious challengers.  Indeed, it has made the duopoly so secure that both parties have felt able to nominate increasingly less-qualified, less-prepared candidates – to the point where we are now confronting the prospect of an utterly inexperienced Republican nominee succeeding an almost equally inexperienced Democratic incumbent.

“At any rate, as I see it, America’s political system seems to me clearly to be broken.  To vote for either major party is to vote for the continuation of that broken system.  That, I am unwilling to do.

“My deepest concern is not for myself.  My single vote will make little difference, and I am entering – if not the twilight, at least the tea-time – of my life.

“My great fear is that thousands of bright, motivated young people – having rallied to Bernie Sanders’ remarkable insurgency – will now be sucked into the Democratic Party by the same boogey-man tactics which, in the past, sucked in bright, motivated young people who worked for Bobby Kennedy, Gene McCarthy, Gary Hart, or Howard Dean.  

“Those young people, in their time, swallowed hard and went to work for the likes of Hubert Humphrey (after he sold his soul to LBJ), Walter Mondale, and John Kerry.   They were assured they could eventually change the Democratic Party from within.

“But large institutions are incredibly hard to change.  Instead of your changing them from within, they change you – until you become the sort of person who believes that Bill and Hillary Clinton can actually be agents of reform, despite their ties to the very institutions which have the most to lose by reform.

“You insist, sir, that stopping Donald Trump is a matter of morality.  I make this election more a question of perspective.  Most Americans, knowing little history – and none beyond the reach of personal memory – cannot see an election as part of a longer narrative.  Given our national propensity for instant gratification, it’s not surprising that they focus on an immediate choice rather than the long-term process of building something better.

“Thus, unsurprisingly, many argue that this election is the “most important” in a long time – perhaps in our nation’s history – while I see it as merely another step in the decay of a system which must, eventually, fall or be overthrown.

“How will this system end?  As the Greeks discovered, and our Founding Fathers understood, corrupt systems inevitably fall – either to democratic, aristocratic, oligarchic or tyrannical forces.

“For myself, I hope for a revolution led by a combination of democratic and aristocratic forces – like the Revolution that founded this country, or the Progressive Era which overthrew the last corporate oligarchy to dominate our nation.

“What I fear is the continuation and strengthening of the oligarchy. 

“Unlike many of my friends, I don’t really fear a dictatorship.  America has never had much patience with tin-pot, would-be dictators, and I doubt they would start with so obvious a phony as Donald Trump.

“At any rate, that’s where I stand.  So please, vote your conscience – and leave me in peace to vote mine.  Barring the unforeseen, I am through with voting for Democrats and Republicans, unless perhaps, for the occasional individual candidate who is personally well-known to me.

“The problem, as I see it, is the two-party system.  Voting for the candidate of either party endorses a system I no longer see as valid.  And you just can’t frighten me into doing that.”