Over at truthdig.com, Peter Scheer (Robert’s bro?) rails for lesser evilism:
Being an American citizen and having the right to vote-assuming your state hasn’t stolen that right through a felony charge, a voter ID law or a shifty election machine-is like having a golden ticket. The president of the United States is, for better or worse, the de facto emperor of the world, and you’re possibly one of a minority of people who gets to pick him.
[your enfeebled, minority rights to vote for “de facto emperor of the world” will not be wasted in this democracy…No, sir. ]
Voting isn’t simply a civic duty or a right; it’s a jackpot, one that corporations, political parties and perhaps the ruling elite are constantly trying to take away from you. The choices you make, and that includes the choice not to be involved, will decide where the bombs fall, where in the developing world the HIV drugs get distributed, how poor you have to be to get health care and whether someone whose life experience amounts to horse racing is put in charge of managing our government’s response to natural disasters.
What a jackpot! What a golden ticket! You decide “where the bombs fall.”
I identify with those progressives who say it is evil for President Obama to send robots across the night to bomb whole villages because someone’s name was added to a secret list we’ll never see. I think it is disgusting that a country that sings of the free and the brave would lock up and essentially torture Pvt. Bradley Manning for courageously defying the faceless imperial beast, as he is alleged to have done. President Obama has done many things in four years that make me grind my teeth.
Scheer leaves no clues as to whether this is vicious satire or not, but I admit to thinking the worst; so I’m climbing out of the interrogator’s window altogether while they freshen their coffee.