The 2024 Presidential election is the most interesting and engrossing election I have ever been through in my life, and part of the reason, for me, is that I would like to at least be alive for four more years–which is at least how long it would take to complete and publish my remaining books, which I regard as unborn children. If I were more optimistic and ambitious, I would hope for 20 years of relative world peace before a nuclear catastrophe unfolds, so that at least my three sons have a chance to realize some of their dreams.
Partly, I have been so engrossed in writing, thinking, and reading about this election because of the remarkably unusual characters in it, and because how unaware most of the world’s people–but especially Americans–are regarding the hierarchy of priorities for human beings at this moment.
In my view, and that of most of the T20 (the Group of 20 Thinkers, which I shall expand on later): These priorities start with: Life, and the continuation of humanity without major disasters or suffering for most humans, especially for women and children.
Why life? Because if we ‘re all dead, it doesn’t matter whether we have received equal rights, whether someone called a group of people garbage, or if they believed in the American flag or politically correct speech or not. It will especially not matter whether they were legal immigrants or not: the border checkpoints will be too radioactive to approach, and all computer systems will be down.
So, the first priority of those who care for humankind is to ensure that we don’t blunder into a catastrophic nuclear war, and the second priority is to ensure that all the victims of genocide or genocidal actions, if they are alive and have lost family or relatives or body parts, be compensated adequately for their loss: we already have hundreds of thousands of those in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Sudan. The third priority, then, would be to have a democratic and rational discussion of what the remaining priorities of humanity should be: in this, people of the caliber of my imaginary Group of 20 Thinkers will have a prominent voice.
Three resplendent thinkers you should read at least a bit of, if you haven’t already: Richard D. Wolff, John Mearsheimer, and Jeffrey Sachs (and, I am adding this on November 4, but see it as necessary: the latest post of George Galloway, British MP, which helped me come to my final decision). I would also add Noam Chomsky, the father of this group of fearless, clearheaded, compassionate, and wise thinkers; and Annie Jacobsen, who spent a lot of her time thinking and researching the reality of nuclear war. Scott Ritter and Col. Douglas McGregor, and the show Judging Freedom hosted by Judge Napolitano. (I bow before these greats).
And why is the Western world so unaware, and so deluded or uninformed about how close we are to nuclear war? Because the disinformation put out by the military industrial complex is so effective, and because it is considered unpatriotic or anti-Western not to believe it. Noam Chomsky, the resolutely antiwar pioneer, said in one of his interviews that any intellectual who doubts or attacks the genuineness of the reasons put out for the war is immediately excluded from the Mainstream Media, and cannot, for example, be invited to write Op-Eds for the New York Times or Washington Post. In the absence of authoritative antiwar voices and material, the public is forced to believe the official line.
Because war is so immensely profitable and, according to Jeffrey Sachs, supports the war economy that has made this country (the USA) boom ever since World War II, maintain 800 military bases around the world, and undertake one hundred “regime change” operations.
As the late antiwar author Kurt Vonnegut would have put it: And so it goes.
George Galloway got me in at the last moment with his clear and unequivocal statement: Kamala is guilty of the murder of children, of having Gaza’s children decapitated and otherwise murdered with American bombs dropped from American airplanes. So her present complicity in genocide overrides the future, hypothetical complicity of Donald Trump. And that though he does not like Donald Trump, who is not his, George Galloway’s type of person, he would prefer him over Kamala Harris, who has not stopped being complicit in the killing, which continues as I write this.
And because George Galloway is so powerful in his reasoning and presentation, and has in fact, supported mine and Author Mark David Ledbetter’s position, decided in a joint blog we wrote almost a month back, I am sure, at this point, that we both reluctantly support Trump, and mainly for this reason: he has far less blood on his hands than Kamala and Biden combined.
There are other considerations, other voices, too. The “ugliness” of Trump’s demonizing immigrants, who are mostly suppliers of labor of the kind America needs, and the savagery of doing so when it was their ancestors who “illegally immigrated” to the US (in most cases before there was an immigration department): how can anyone encourage this?
So, in the final summation, it comes down to this: Which is more evil: the murder of millions of innocents, along with the possible igniting of a mad clash of egos and reckless escalation that might end up killing billions of innocents–which the Democratic Party is guilty of? Or the use of racist stereotypes and scaremongering to make the common, mostly misinformed American voter to vote for your party (as the Republicans are doing)?
Without doubt, my values are clear on this: murdering millions of innocents is a far worse choice than the spread of ugly racism, and the killing or oppression of a few million colored immigrants whose only fault is that they wish to feed their families, get a good education for their children, and get good jobs. There was a news item that 23 Nobel-prizewinning economists had endorsed Kamala Harris, whose economic proposals are better for the U.S., and less likely to cause inflation or lower the standard of living for the poorer two-thirds than Trump’s economic program. Even if that’s true, I say that, to me, Ethics and Humanity trump Economics and money. I am not willing to sacrifice one innocent life in return for a higher GDP. As an American car dealer I ran into said to me, just an hour back, “I’ve been a lifelong Democrat, but now that my party is guilty of genocide, I wish it is completely destroyed. And though I would have voted for Dr. Jill Stein, she has no chance of winning, so I support President Trump, who is the better of the two highly unsatisfactory choices we have been given. At least I think he will not abet genocide.”
I wish I had completed my project at least 4 weeks before the election date so that my plea to her, and our condition for our support, had actually reached her ears (a one in a million chance, true, but do you think she is reading George Galloway?). But I was sick in body and spirit, and I hope and pray for mercy to all those who are presently in danger of death, particularly those children, women, and older adults who are on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.