Quote Of The Day

David Swanson, in discussing the relationship that the Occupy movements and politics should have to each other:

The best way to improve the elections is to improve the society. The best way to destroy the society is to focus too heavily on elections. The rational choice between two bums who are both worse than the two who were offered up in the previous election cannot possibly be rational.

Occupy the Winter of Our Discontent

I love the bit about rational choices. As I've noted, Ralph Nader's admonition that when you choose between two evils, what you end up with is evil, is just as true today. When you're in the habit of just choosing the lesser evil, the evils will get worse over time.

The other interesting thing to note about this quote is in the first sentence, and in the paragraphs preceding it. It's that it's becoming very clear now that the Occupy movements are determined to stay out of partisan politics. I think this is probably a good move. The archives of this blog are littered with tales of progressive organizations and publications that no longer do anything but serve the will of the people who have the real money. These people, whatever their motivations, control the debate that most of us see and hear. You really have to go looking for points of view, for instance, that don't accept the economic inevitability of cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They're there, and they make more sense than what you see on TV, even on Al Jazeera or the BBC.

The Occupy movements are about confrontation, largely because they don't see any other way of affecting political discourse. I don't know if they're right about that, but I certainly understand the reasons.

That, far more than the pithy observation about our political choices, is what makes this a worthy quote of the day.