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“There are two issues. One is a kind of moral issue: do you vote against the greater evil if you don’t happen to like the other candidate? The answer to that is yes. If you have any moral understanding, you want to keep the greater evil out. Second is a factual question: how do Trump and Clinton compare? I think they’re very different. I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than Trump’s on every issue I can think of.”
— Noam Chomsky
“If not me, who? If not now, when?”
— Emma Watson
Ok, yes, the second quote was originally from Hillel the Elder, but Watson made it famous and will factor in later.
First to Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky is too smart to ever lie. But maybe just a little too smart to have hope. Regardless, he is one of the great figures of our lifetimes.
Evaluating Chomsky’s opinions on lesser evil voting is difficult because he seems to be right on just about everything else. I am not one of the people on the left who sees no difference between the two parties. Trump is especially bad. The difference between the two parties is obviously great enough where one would be right to commit their night to keeping the Republicans out, no matter how much one might disagree with the Democrats.
The act of voting is not always that easy in our so-called democracy however. Greg Palast has been keeping track of the recent voter purges in the United States. Things were especially bleak in…