zinn changed his tune

[click image]

How refreshing.

I am sick to death of the left throwing the baby out with the bath water, as if there were nothing else hanging in the balance while we stump for our ideals. It's not even excusable to me anymore. There is no getting around the fact that elections have consequences. So jeopardizing an election merely to make some statement of your ideals more vivid to whoever chances to be within earshot is just and only masturbation. The argument about votes for third party candidates helping to gain them needed funding and public exposure is crap. People have been using those excuses for my whole life, and for at least decades before I was born. It too evidently doesn't work. So it isn't a viable argument. Either work the rest of the time to make those parties viable or direct your energy to making a viable party better. Whutever. Fooling around with the prospects for your suffering brothers and sisters in the run-up to an election by stumping against someone who will clearly do them more good than the other, or on election day by your vote, is completely hateful, completely unacceptable, even if some people accept it. This creepy and dank and onanistic compulsion to spew one's imagined righteousness all over an anguished electorate makes me want to tear out eyeballs, grind them up, stomp on them, burn them, mix them with shit and use them for fertilizer.

So how about all leftist intellectuals calling it off between the conventions and election day from now on? That is more than fair. It's only a couple months where you can use your energies in favor of getting the best result for those whose very lives depend on the consequences of the election.

[4:30pm -- I just got an email from someone whining that they supported Nader because his platform was better for suffering beings. Fuck! Fuck you! You knew the whole time there wasn't part of a chance he'd be elected, but you also knew there was a darn good chance Obama's win could be taken away without a landslide vote, and you pissed on it. Your dreamy little good intentions made clouds that might well have worked to put McCain in the White House. LOOK at it! Other people's lives matter more than your image as an altruist. You're not an altruist if you won't DO the selfless thing for the well-being of others. I don't care what you only CALL it.]