hey, i found your blog through your response to dion-thesocialist and it made me rethink a lot of what i believed about voting because before i believed in voting for the lesser of 2 evils etc, anyway as someone from the uk where there's an election next month i was wondering if you had any more resources or articles about this matter for me to read over so i can make an informed choice? i know you're not a robot library but that post made the most sense to me so i hope you don't mind me asking!
I would suggest you read Magedah Shabo on the lesser-of-two-evils fallacy and how propaganda and hegemony remains established through these deviating discussions. The book is called Techniques of Propaganda and Persuasion. My opposition to Hillary Clinton should not be read as indicative of support for Republicans neither should it be interpreted as anti-feminism as I am a socialist feminist. My opposition to Hillary Clinton is not even opposition to dynasty politics, although that in itself is a related and equally disturbing display of power in pseudo-democracies.
My contempt for Hillary Clinton should be read as opposition to what the United States of America - and its ceremonial heads - symbolizes and registers as for those who are living on the margins of local and global society. For many of us from South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, South and Central America - the global south, if you may, or the political term Third Word - for us, women like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren or Susan Rice and others are no better, no worse than their liberal and conservatives male counterparts for one very simple reason: The basic crux of their political philosophy does not differ progressively than those before them. There may be a few celebratory distinctions but they’re only there to perform a tangent and take away consumer popular vote’s attention. And I’m fairly sure everyone knows how amnesiac the American memory is in this case.
To give a small idea of why Hillary Clinton is very much the same people liberals claim to be appalled by in terms of ‘social justice’, it would serve us well to remember that:
Dedicated to maintaining U.S. dominance around the globe, financially and militarily, Clinton’s term in office involved the rebranding of U.S. imperialism with a kinder, gentler face after the belligerence of the Bush years–while continuing to assert the right of the U.S. to intervene unilaterally around the globe and to guarantee Corporate America’s pre-eminence.In 2009, Clinton pushed for the troop surge in Afghanistan that sent 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers into the first stop in the “war on terror.” The surge turned out to be a disaster for Afghan civilians. More than a year after the additional depoloyments, UN observers found that civilian deaths weren’t down, but had risen by 15 percent.Clinton supported the Obama administration’s increased use of drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, which have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians, according to estimates. On a 2009 trip to Pakistan, Clinton was peppered with questions from family members of people who had been killed by drones. Her peevish response? "There is a war going on.“IN 2011, Clinton pushed for the NATO air war in Libya. She made the case for intervention against the forces of dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi on “humanitarian” grounds, arguing that the U.S. had to intervene to free the Libyan people. In the long run, however, this “humanitarian” policy was little different from the strategy of unilateral regime change pursued in the Bush years. Washington’s war in Libya was also designed to affirm the U.S. government’s power to intervene in any country around the globe.While Clinton insisting that ousting a dictator in Libya was in the interest of “democracy,” she made no such argument during the flowering of the Arab revolutions earlier that year. Her first instinct in early 2011 was to push for more support for the U.S.-allied dictators of Tunisia and Egypt.In Tunisia, President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali was carrying out the dictates of the U.S. and International Monetary Fund programs that imposed austerity and privatization. When the first signs of revolt emerged, Clinton declared: “We are not taking sides.“In the early days of the Egyptian Revolution, Clinton was likewise hesitant to part ways with longtime U.S. friend Hosni Mubarak. Even as Mubarak’s police forces–armed with U.S.-supplied weapons and gear–attacked and killed pro-democracy protesters, the U.S. stuck to its support of the regime. “We are monitoring Egypt’s military,” Clinton told ABC News. “They are demonstrating restraint, trying to differentiate between peaceful protesters–who we support–and potential looters and other criminal elements who are a danger to the Egyptian people.”Back in the U.S. government’s self-declared “backyard,” Hillary Clinton had been more than willing to support the ouster of the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, in 2009, overthrown by right-wing golpistas. She has used her position as secretary of state to score lucrative contracts for U.S. military contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Electric.
And more. I’m not sure how any of this is feminist or progressive or remotely new and changed but the lesser-of-two-evils does serve to take away popular vote’s focus from these constant, violent and deeply embedded in policy and principle issues.
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turnnoffyourmind
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