Voting Against ... A "Positive" Party Technique?

Ya know, there's the theoretical world and the real world. (I hear everyone saying "Well, D'UH!") In the theoretical world the American system is about supporting the candidate that will represent the nation best. In the real world, it has degenerated to supporting the lame-ass candidate that is most able to defeat the lame-ass candidate that worries people the most.

When the nation and the system have deteriorated, the real world choice is to vote against ... if someone feels compelled to participate in the system itself from a sense of auld lang syne, or (perhaps) a lack of moral courage to release the Left or Right Teat of the electoral-fantasy bosom and face the world as an individual of conscience.

As a youth in the seventies I watched the "Kung Fu" TV series. One episode had a bunch of pacifist farmers or sheep-herders being abused by chauvinistic cattle ranchers. The leader of the sheep people told the hero-monk that, when attacked with a stick, his options were to allow the beating, or pick up a stick and fight back, becoming like the violent ones. The hero answered with a third option: take the stick away.

Righties and Lefties keep going to the Stick (the Election Lotto) to attack the other side or defend their own. For people who still believe in the American voting system (in its current incarnation), voting against someone really may be the only alternative. Granted, granted.

Just consider stepping away from the trees and looking at the whole forest, and see if being inside the forest fire is really productive or not.