Would You Like To Be Pure, Or To Accomplish Something?

Some idiot whom I won't name posted a piece on Slate yesterday saying he hopes Hillary wins, but he probably won't vote for her. Voting for her would interfere with his self-image as a radical Leftist.(My words, not his.)

Idiots like this guy are not new: people who claim to be too far to the Left to actually participate in politics. They remind me of the wealthy Harvard students in Six Degrees of Separation who describe themselves as radical Leftists but become enraged when they find out that their parents have invited a homeless man into their New York apartment, immediately wondering what this bum might have stolen from their bedrooms etc. Phony radicals like that, parlour radicals whose radicalism vanishes whenever icky poor people get too near their parlours or clubs, weren't new when that film was released. Those characters, those whiny rich punks were unpleasantly familiar.

You can maintain a image of yourself as ideologically pure and be of no actual use to anyone, or you can become involved in politics, which involves making deals and compromising and getting your hands dirty. That schmuck from Slate states that Hillary is not a Leftist. Clearly, to him, no Leftist has a chance of political success the United States.

Or to put it the other way around, no one in the US can pass his ideological purity test and still accomplish something. Why become involved in American politics when there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats except when it comes to women's health and freedom to choose, green energy, tax breaks for Big Oil, labor unions, whether one fears that the government has too much control over corporations or that corporations have too much control over the government, whether the best way to help all of us is to help the poorest and weakest or the richest and most powerful, whether or not everyone should have access to affordable health care, whether too many tax breaks are available to corporate CEO's making 8 figures a year or more or to teachers and firemen making $50,000 a year or less, whether GLBT's don't have enough rights or whether they have too many, whether or not it's time to revoke the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, whether or not drilling for oil and gas in national parks would be a good idea and whether it should be easier or more difficult for people in the US to obtain guns and ammo, whether life in the US is too easy or too difficult for undocumented people, things like that?

Tell you what, Slate schmuck: if you actually do sneak into a polling booth and vote for Hillary, because, like any other sane and informed person, you're aware of the huge and tremendously important differences between her and Trump -- I won't tell anyone, I promise. Making any promises to you makes me sick, but there are more important things in the world than how I feel and what sort of scum I find it necessary to deal with for the sake of the greater good.