By Hanna Grissel
Whom do you vote for when both sides of the binary system are seemingly equally corrupt? Is a third-party vote any more reasonable? Is fidelity more important than pragmatism?
Jason Brennan, a philosopher who wrote The Ethics of Voting, commented on pragmatism, “If they’re smart, they’ll vote for the candidate likely to best produce the outcome they want. That might very well be compromising, but if voting for a far-left or far-right candidate means that you’re just going to lose the election, then you’ve brought the world further away from justice rather than closer to it.”
Erring on the side of caution, it’s clear that we need to elect the lesser of two evils. Proof of the insurmountable corruption by both parties is transparent at this point. So whom do I choose? Is it even a point to voting anymore?
Looking at Hillary Clinton, it’s intriguing to note that the nonpartisan group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust named Clinton one the worst ethics violators of 2015. More recently, within days of the Justice Department’s dismissal of her email-scandal case, the State Department reopened the case. Even if you disregard the obvious evidence of her abuse of power, one can still point to her persistent support of neoliberal policies negatively affecting black, brown, and working-class people and her consistent enabling of militarization both domestic and foreign, which has subsequently led to the destruction of civil liberties. All for the profit of her financial backers, I’d hope.
Of course, proponents of human rights are at the least wary of a Clinton presidency. So where does a wary one turn?
Some say Donald Trump, but from the “at least 3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts during the past three decades” to his apologist rhetoric for violent and white-supremacist supporters, it’s a no-brainer that a proponent of human rights cannot and will not vote for this reality-TV star. A star who is part of the 1 percent and will pass policy to support them.
What’s clear to me is that capitalist supremacy is prevalent on both sides. Nationalism in the form of militarization is inevitable from both parties. Destruction of liberty is expectable on varying levels from either candidate.
In reality, Trump and Clinton are either side of a coin. Trump flaunts his fascist ideology like a new suit, while Clinton conceals her neo-fascist history like a pen in the pocket of her liberal pants-suit. In fact, it’s a broken pen that she hopes enough people won’t see bleed through.
Most open eyes can see that our politicians are mere pawns in a match being played by the heads of corporations. In 2014, researchers working with Cambridge University hardened this theory’s validity, stating “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” So basically, their claim is that the United States is an oligarchy.
In the end, when you flip that coin, it might be worth remembering that it’s the same substance regardless the side. Is it really worth voting?
