Episode 268 of RevolutionZ addresses the upcoming U.S presidential election. Will there even be one? If there is, who will be candidates? Should a revolutionary, a radical, a progressive, or a typical citizen vote, get out the vote, watch Netflix, block a bridge, hibernate? All the above? None of the above? Is there even a way to sensibly think about such choices? Hate fascist Trump? Hate Genocide Joe? Okay, then what?
Episode 268 of RevolutionZ addresses the upcoming U.S presidential election. Will there even be one? If there is, who will be candidates? Should a revolutionary, a radical, a progressive, or a typical citizen vote, get out the vote, watch Netflix, block a bridge, hibernate? All the above? None of the above? Is there even a way to sensibly think about such choices? Hate fascist Trump? Hate Genocide Joe? Okay, then what?
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I'm the host of the podcast that titled Revolution Z. This is our 268th consecutive episode and the title this time Not Too Creative is thinking about election 2024. It's obviously going to be a big focus of attention. It already is in many places and it's going to be further. I can't talk about all aspects of it, but we can talk about, in particular, the presidential election in the United States. There are many others that are of great import also, but let's focus on that. The first question we might ask is will it even happen? I know that in popular discussion, that's not really a question that is asked, but I think it's something that we might want to contemplate, mostly because of what's called artificial intelligence and its influence and impact, and on what might be the surrounding events.
Speaker 1:Ai is rather easy to use to create what are called deep fakes. They're just fakes. They're videos that are manufactured, so to speak, by the artificial intelligence and don't involve the characters that appear in them or the events that are portrayed in them. It's all just fabrication, but it's very effective fabrication. It's fabrication that it's very hard to tell that it isn't real. I don't know, but it's easy to conceive of a massive volume of that stuff percolating throughout alternative media and even mainstream media and making a mess of the process of life and of relating to an election. You could imagine, I think, or I could imagine the whole thing getting postponed while some kind of provision is made to prevent that interruption. It's harder to imagine the whole thing getting postponed on grounds that it's bought and sold in the advertising world and in the financing world of how you run your campaigns, etc. There's not going to be any move on to cancel it or delay it for those reasons, although of course there should be, but there won't be.
Speaker 1:Is the electoral realm irrelevant? Is another question that gets asked, or is the electoral realm highly relevant? These two questions are on the minds of a lot of people. It isn't just leftist with critiques, it's also the general population, as is evidenced by the number of people who don't vote and who think that therefore it's not worth their time to make their way to the voting booth and cast a ballot. That's what they're saying. Those people are saying look, this doesn't even merit my attention, it doesn't merit any time. Therefore, it's basically effectively irrelevant, it has no bearing.
Speaker 1:Their complaint is not so different from the leftist complaint. So it runs sort of like this there's a government, the government has a structure, it has relationships, it has history, and all of that tends to be far more determinative of what the government does than who is in office, Point one. Point two who we put in office, who we think we have put in office, is often different than who that person is once in office. In other words, it isn't just deep fakes, it is, and has been over and over and over again, the dynamic of the candidate saying X and then doing Y. Well, if you think about it, that's another argument for irrelevance.
Speaker 1:Electoral realm, as highly relevant, in contrast, says okay, it isn't everything. We agree with the, says the advocate of this point of view. We agree with the critique that what we have is a one-party system with two wings of the one party, the one party being defined by protecting the dominant relations of society, reproducing society without any fundamental changes. That is the job of our one party. The two wings of it see different ways to do that, which vary over time as well, while agreeing with the critique that the institution of the state as we understand it, which is in context of, as well, misogyny, sexism, racism, classism, if you will, the hierarchy of economic classes in society. In context of all that, and by its own structure and its own history as well, the state is not a place that is going to generate fundamental change on its own, and so the electoral realm would appear to be irrelevant, but the advocates of the view that it is relevant come back with all that is true.
Speaker 1:But even while all that is true, at certain moments in time and for certain votes, that is to say, votes that are going to or might matter in the determination of who wins, there is a lot at stake. Why is there a lot at stake? Well, because even within the confines of recreating the fundamental relations of society, which is the general accepted view among the contending wings of the one party this is normal times even within that, the differences can matter. The differences can affect people's lives. The differences can also affect the situation in which people find themselves and then what they are in position to demand. So this argument runs If we elect, let's say, somebody like Trump instead of somebody like Biden, we are in a situation where the dissent, the subsequent dissent and the subsequent activism will be very much oriented to getting back to where we were. In other words, it will be oriented to preventing and reversing changes made by this extreme wing of the one party state. That has proved to be true historically and we can expect that it would be true again. I think so.
Speaker 1:I think that is an argument for why it's highly relevant, as is the argument that, well, the things which the elected official can affect and does affect also matter. They don't change society fundamentally, but they matter to the quality of people's lives. So we have two views which often are posed as contradictory, but in fact they're actually not. There's nothing contradictory about it. So, speaking for myself, I can believe that the United States government is a gigantic apparatus which is constrained in countless ways by the dynamics that are built into its operations, so that the two wings of the corporate party and that's another structural feature are not going to yield hugely different results, fundamentally different results most of the time. I can believe that and I can simultaneously believe that, nonetheless, if there is a significant gap in the policies that are likely to ensue with one candidate as compared to with another candidate, the difference can be great enough so that that difference alone is important and so that the conditions under which we're operating in the next four years, say, are also important. So I don't think it's that electoral realm is irrelevant or is highly relevant. I think it is, generally speaking, somewhat relevant and, in some places and at some times, worthy of attention and effort. There are other places and times when it's barely perceptible the difference. And then there are still other places in time, not very frequent, in which something strange has occurred and one or another wing has gone off. The rails is functioning outside and beyond the normal behavior of political candidates and what would become elected officials. I think that's what we are now experiencing and have been experiencing for the duration of Trump, because Trump is not your usual political candidate. He's a emissary, not of one wing of ruling elites, but of a kind of a new dynamic, a fascist dynamic, which is extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1:All right, should we engage in electoral activity? Should we engage in electoral activism? This is a perennial question and there can be diverse reasoning behind thinking about this. It's a complicated question. So for person X or movement X or organization X to engage with the electoral cycle, the presidential election in the United States, for one thing, it takes some time, it takes some energy and that could go someplace else. For a second thing, it affects those who do it. That's inevitable. Everything that we do affects us. We don't just affect those things and the effects on us can be adverse. That can be another factor. The possibility that it's just a complete waste of time because it wouldn't matter one way or the other is another possibility. So we have a situation in which we're trying to choose between things that we can be doing as compared to one, either voting, which takes very little time and the time factor is not very substantial and probably but I'm not sure doesn't affect those who are doing it, who have a critique of it very much. They can do it without their act of doing it undercutting their commitments. That's a possibility, so to speak. But then it's also possible that engaging in the electoral realm takes one away from the critique of it and the critique of society. So that would be really detrimental. So our question is when should somebody engage? How should somebody engage?
Speaker 1:I think the general answer to this question is we should engage when it really matters, in other words not when we're in a state that's a foregone conclusion, because then our engagement is not going to accomplish anything, and not in a condition where who wins is not very dramatic in terms of the difference between one candidate and another candidate holding the office. We shouldn't particularly vote in those cases. If we want to, okay, but it's not urgent. But on the other hand, in a situation where who holds office between those who are running is going to change the situation for people in society A in adverse ways that affect people and B in ways that affect the orientation of movements we should consider voting. And if voting in that case is not going to distract us from our general understanding of society and commitment to more fundamental change, then we should do it, or so it seems to me. How do we vote in such a way or engage in electoral activity, whether it's phone calling or just talking to other people about voting and so on? How do we do that in a way that doesn't work on our minds and act as a sort of slippery slope away from a broader and more fundamental understanding of how society works and what society needs?
Speaker 1:I think we do it by being honest. We say, for example, in the current election, if we were going to do that, or the coming election, if we were going to do that, we don't say vote Biden, he's our man. If he can't do it, no one can. That was a high school chant for the football team that just popped into my mind where I went to high school. We don't say that, we don't say Biden's great, biden's wonderful. We can call Biden any name we want. We can point out what's wrong with his policies, we can point out what's wrong with the electoral system, and indeed we should do those things.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, we can say, however, in this particular place let's say Iowa at this particular time, because of the difference between these two candidates, who wins is highly relevant to where we go in the next four years and to our capacity to impact where we go longer than that, and so we should do it. But we should do it. It isn't even just holding our nose, which we would have to do, but it's also making evident and trying to do it in a way that organizes toward the future. That's actually the way we should do. All things that we are pursuing in an activist fashion, if we're pursuing better wages in the UAW, or if we're pursuing a reduction of racist police behavior, or if we're pursuing sane policies vis-a-vis the survival of the planet, and on and on we should do those things in a manner where we are simultaneously trying to build capacity to go further, where we are simultaneously trying to affect people's consciousness, people's understanding of the world, in a way that takes us further, not in a way that wins a change and then goes to sleep or goes back to business as usual, in a way that keeps fighting. And the same with an election, if we are going to cast a ballot, or if we're going to work to get the vote out, or if we're going to advocate among our friends or write essays, for that matter, if we're going to do those things on behalf of beating, let's say, one candidate so that another candidate wins and keeps the bad one or the worse one, much worse one, out of office. We do it in a way that doesn't obfuscate our future needs, that doesn't manipulate and lie about the candidate who we want to have win, but that tells the truth. If we can vote and if we can even make phone calls, say or write on behalf of voting, knowing what we need to do in the future, so can other people and therefore we can tell the truth and we can organize for voting as a mechanism of moving toward fundamental change. So that seems to me to be, I guess, why to do it and when to do it.
Speaker 1:And it comes down to often what's called less or evil voting and what's the argument against that? And now let's get objective, or let's get concrete about the current situation that we find ourselves in. There are a lot of people saying, totally understandably, never Biden. So what they're saying is basically, I'm not going to vote for Trump, are you kidding? Of course I'm not going to vote for Trump, but I'm not going to vote for Biden either.
Speaker 1:Because it seems to me that it's hard to delineate the lesser of lesser evil when the guy who's supposed to be not lesser is financing, cheerleading and alibiying for, and getting off the hook the behavior of Israel in Palestine and Israel in Gaza. When somebody is doing that, when somebody is engaging in abetting, financing, arming, genocide, genocidal policies, how can we call that lesser? And that feels like a very compelling argument. I admit it, it does. It's not easy to get past that. Is it just holding your nose to vote for genocide, joe? Is that it Holding my nose justifies voting for genocide, joe? No, what justifies voting for him in, say, a swing stout where the election who wins is at stake? In?
Speaker 1:What justifies voting for him and advocating voting for him one way or another is not that we hold our nose and display that we hate him. It's that we are actively trying to accomplish more fundamental change and we understand what we're doing as a part of that process. As well as that, we understand that to ignore the pain that people will suffer under Trump as they did before, they might not suffer or will not suffer under Biden especially with a movement that's effective, means that we care about human well-being. It reveals that we care about human well-being. Of course we care about human well-being, but what does it look like to somebody who is concerned about, let's say, abortion rights if a leftist in a state says I'm not going to vote. I'm not going to vote for Biden to beat Trump, not because I know that he's going to win this state and not because I know that he's going to lose this state, but because, even though it's close and my vote therefore could matter, I don't care about that as much as I care about the fact that I just can't stand genocide, joe. That says to people that we are a bit aloof from their concerns.
Speaker 1:It's sort of like imagine, during the recent UAW strike, a leftist comes along and says, hey, hey, wait a second here. The auto industry is a vile, disgusting capitalist organization. The strike is not going to change that, which is true. The strike winning the strike is going to win some better circumstances and some better income for deserving people, but it's not going to address anything fundamental. In a sense, it sort of ratifies the idea that we should even have owners dishing out salaries, owners making decisions, bosses making decisions and workers having to obey them. And so I don't want to be a part of it, I don't want to advocate for it, I don't want to give my time for it, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:What would that say to the people on the line, to the people who are striking? It would say well, you just don't give a shit. You leftists are divorced from reality. They might not have an analysis, and they might have an analysis that goes further and says you leftists say you're for fundamental change, but you're not willing to participate in the dynamics by which people can come to that same position and can come to be radical and revolutionary, because you just want to pose and you just want to appear more radical than thou. These are real feelings that people have. Working people have those feelings about a left that seems to be concerned with everything but them Seems that way. It's not that way, but it seems that way, and how it seems matters.
Speaker 1:Anyway, for all these reasons, it seems to me to make sense that lesser evil voting is not crazy when you have two options not Biden, trump and Sanders say a third option. So if you vote for Sanders, against the other two, you're not voting a lesser evil, you're voting. You say to yourself a positive good, okay, but with the two of them, you say and you feel you're voting a lesser evil because while Biden is better than many on some issues, he's genocide, joe. For great sakes, he's genocide, joe. Genocide is evil. He's partaking of evil. It isn't just that he's part of the system Sanders would be too if he was elected it's that he's pushing the damn thing in a direction that is disgusting. So he's genocide, joe, and to vote for him, I have to be suggesting that people should vote for the lesser evil. It's just the truth. But why does it matter? Well, because consequences matter, and the lesser evil's consequences can be less bad for people now and less of a setback for continuing efforts to get better later.
Speaker 1:Could the election process be better? Of course it could. It could in diverse ways. So, for instance, one thing that people propose is a voting mechanism which allows you to vote for what you really want and, as the process goes along, rank choice voting. It comes down to two at the end, but there are votes for positive and you can get a different outcome that way too. So that's one thing, but another thing is finance reform right, it could be better if well. To give an example suppose candidates don't raise money at all and don't spend money on the election other than what is provided by the government, that is to say, suppose the government provides the funds that elections are run on. Suppose the media doesn't get paid but legally has to provide space, the same for both parties or for both candidates, and if there are multiple candidates, then a framework that makes sense. In that case. That would obviously be incredibly important, not only in the presidential election and perhaps even more so in lower ballot elections, in congressional elections or Senate elections and so on.
Speaker 1:Could it be better? Is the Electoral College ludicrous? Yes, it is. So is the Senate structure ludicrous, and we can just keep going and moving toward. What A kind of assembly structure that would be a real participatory democracy.
Speaker 1:But we don't have all that, and so, not having all that, there's going to be an election, and when there's an election, there are going to be people who take office, and we have to ask ourselves does it matter who takes office? Does it matter if Donald Trump becomes president or if Biden continues as president? Is Biden continuing as president President? Wonderful? No, is it bearable? I suppose yes, we'll have to bear it. Is Trump becoming president? Wonderful? No, is it good? No, is it bearable? Maybe not. It may well be that Trump becoming president is literally not bearable. Of course, it could be that Biden becoming president is not bearable too, because global warming continues and Biden doesn't do a damn thing about it and the movement isn't strong enough to force him to. But you see the difference? The movement would be trying to force Biden too. The movement, with Trump in power, would be trying to prevent Trump from sending police into the houses of people who are organizing against global warming. It's different. It's very significantly different. So what's going to happen? I don't know. The United States is a very strange place all the time. Now it is particularly so, I think. What's going to happen if it is Trump and Biden, and I wouldn't be that surprised if it isn't. Biden reminds me a little bit.
Speaker 1:Most people wouldn't agree with this. I'm sure of what's his name Lyndon Johnson. What do I mean by that? Well, lyndon Johnson was horrible on international relations. He was engaging in the war in Indochina and in Vietnam, but actually he was, relatively speaking, rather good domestically. So again, it's a lesser evil argument. And again it's a lesser evil argument where the lesser evil Lyndon Johnson, had he run again, would have been evil. He would have been conducting the war, everything that let's see, everything that flies on, everything that moves famous quote from Henry Kissinger Basically a war of attrition and massacre on Vietnam. What for? To establish the norm that nobody can leave the orbit that is the American Empire.
Speaker 1:Okay, he didn't run. Why not? Why was he removed from running? Well, I think it was because we don't have a documentation of the exact reason. But I think it was because, if you like, trump's deep state, people with power in the United States, decided that he was too much of a lightning rod for the left, which was at the time strong and getting stronger, and they felt having him run, given his association with the war, given the attitude of people, large numbers of people, toward him. Hey, hey, lbj, how many kids did you kill today? With Biden it would be. Hey, hey, genocide, joe, how many murders did you finance and arm today? Or something like that. And they decided he would be too much of a lightning rod. It was better to replace him so as to take that irritant out of the public vision, so to speak. And they did Okay.
Speaker 1:So you can imagine that happening with Biden, I think. I don't think it's likely, but you can imagine it, and you can also imagine it being a combination of that and health, say. And I actually think the same thing is true for Trump. As his legal troubles advance and as he is found not only to owe because of fraud, but perhaps to spend time in jail and his support is crippled by that, maybe he has to be replaced too. I'm not saying it'll happen. I don't think it will happen, but it could happen on both sides. But what is more likely to happen is a ridiculous situation in which the winner will be the person who is not alienating voters faster.
Speaker 1:Trump is losing support in various constituencies and it's going to continue, I think, but Biden is too, and the question is, who's going to lose less because of their personal persona, because of their interventions and because of their commitments? And I don't know the answer to that. Many people are saying that the Never-Biden is going to cause him to lose more. In other words, the horror and outrage that people feel about his mid-east policies is going to cause him to lose, and only somewhat behind his laggard policies about global warming. But at the same time, trump is slowly but surely in some ways unraveling, I think, and he is losing support, maybe not his fundamental base, but the surrounding support is getting weakened. So who's going to lose more and therefore lose the election? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think, as time gets closer to November, the less evil argument, which is currently seen as insane by a lot of people on the left, is currently seen as come on, you've got to be kidding. How much worse can we get than genocide, than pursuing genocidal policies is going to, in fact, pick up momentum as not insane. The world is insane, our situation is insane, our circumstances are insane, but voting for a lesser evil, prevent more damage and to create conditions for winning more benefits is not insane. We'll see. Here's another crazy thought. I'm coming up with a bunch of them today. I guess Thoughts that will strike some people as strange.
Speaker 1:You know, if the what you take from what I'm saying is what happened to Albert, he's no longer a revolutionary he's talking about that's nonsense, okay, and I want to mince words about it. That's nonsense. We can understand our conditions and act in light of our conditions and have our commitments. It is not impossible. Countless people have done it. Countless people have have faced horrible circumstances, horrible political arrangements, and fought those arrangements, including trying to get better ones that are short of revolution.
Speaker 1:Revolution is not going to come tomorrow. I wish it was If it were any chance of it. Well, look, I'm advocating as much as I can anyway, but it's not going to come tomorrow. And making believe it is going to come tomorrow and therefore trying for nothing less is irrelevant and is backward and is an obstruction to it coming tomorrow is just totally deluded. Since it's not going to come tomorrow, we have to try and move toward the fundamental change we want to enlighten and develop a basis for winning more on that road, for advocating more and getting more people to want to travel that road. We have to do that, but we also have to look at the conditions that exist and try to change them in a manner that gives us a better prospect, a better circumstance for fighting for longer change.
Speaker 1:Okay, here's the additional weird situation that tells you something about the United States. I don't know how much more you know. I don't know what to call it. Upside down, life could be than it pretty much is. The election might hinge on Taylor Swift. It might be that what Biden loses from the justified hara at his policies and his choices, he gains back because, let's say, taylor Swift decides to become really politically impactful and she brings out the vote and affects what people want via the vote and therefore who they vote for. Now people will say, yeah, michael, you're crazy. Yeah, was Ronald Reagan the president.
Speaker 1:Am I missing something? Does it have nothing to do no effect that these people come with a gigantic following, which she has, and with a allegiance from that following, whatever it's based on, whether it's based on, in her case, partly her personality, partly the thing that she says and, of course, her art, her music. If somebody has this kind of gigantic following, it's like having a huge megaphone. Would that the left had a huge megaphone? It doesn't.
Speaker 1:So oftentimes we talk about. Well, how is what we say how is the thing I write? I go sit at my desk tomorrow and I write something and I ask myself how is that going to affect the population? As if it's going to be in the hands of the whole population. It's not. It's going to reach the audience that, wherever I publish, it reaches, and that's far less than the whole population. It's not just far less, it's infinitely less than the whole population. So that's what I have to think about. I have to think about how is what I'm going to do, or what I'm going to write or what I'm going to say, going to impact the constituency that will perhaps hear it, perhaps see it, perhaps read it, and the derivative effect on them. How will that affect others? That's also important because that's a wider circle and it can become a still wider circle.
Speaker 1:Now look what happens if Taylor Swift thinks about that. She's not thinking about a small circle of friends, she's not thinking about a audience that hears her, because they have some kind of special device, which you know like, again, censorship and they get to hear her. It's not an audience, it's not even an average audience of a star, of somebody who is well known. It's a gigantic audience. And so what happens if she thinks about well, how does what I do affect them? And then all the people who they interact with beyond themselves? The answer is well, how about this is a way to put it If I had the choice and this is sick, because the whole thing is sick If I had the choice to spend an hour tomorrow talking to I don't know 20,000 and I don't have that choice 20,000 people thinking about moving to the left, I mean, I would love to do that, I would love to have that opportunity, I would love to have it for other people to have that opportunity.
Speaker 1:But suppose I could choose between that and spending an hour talking to Taylor Swift. I might have to choose the hour talking to Taylor Swift. Why? Because she's gonna talk to 20 million people and because the 20,000 people are going to talk to another I don't know 60,000 people, and so it's a gross calculation. It's a horrible thing to live within, but we do just like. We live within an electoral contest, an electoral system in which we don't like anybody. But you have to notice the differences. So I hope that what I'm saying is clear. I'm not sure it is, and I hope that it warrants some thought and please understand that when you think about it.
Speaker 1:The issue isn't are the two parties, not two parties, but two wings of one corporate party? Yes, and I've been saying that for decades. Is the process of elections corrupt, bent upside down and vile and not remotely, in its broad contours, even democratic, much less self-managing? Yes, that's the case. Is Biden despicable? I mean, I don't know how to describe what his policies in the Middle East say about him.
Speaker 1:Yes, is Trump just beyond the pale? I mean completely off the rails? Is he a fascist? As best I can tell, the only argument against that he's a fascist is to say he's entirely a narcissistic egomaniac and he doesn't care about an ideology fascism and a sort of a vision, a fascist vision. He just cares about where he winds up and how much power he has and how much wealth he has. Okay, that's an argument against him personally being a fascist. He's not sophisticated enough, he doesn't care enough about anything beyond himself, but the process that he's unleashing is a fascist process. Okay. So all of that is true, and presenting all of that as a reason I hate Biden.
Speaker 1:I can't stand the electoral system, the electoral college is incredibly ridiculous, et cetera, et cetera, all the things that you could say and I would go further, actually but all the things that you could say, those are not arguments about this issue. This issue is with two candidates, trump and Biden, who can become president. If that's the case, I'm not even sure that's going to be the case, but if that's the case, how do we think about it? We think about it the same way. We think about fighting for higher wages, fighting for better conditions, fighting for a change in policing, a change in courtroom dynamics, fighting for better housing, fighting for sane policies regarding immigration, and on and on and on. Protecting abortion rights or rewinding them, fighting against sexism in all its forms. It's the same way. We do all of that. We try to impact outcomes in a way which helps those who suffer unduly One, two.
Speaker 1:That's also, however, a reason, for example, to work in a soup kitchen. It absolutely is, and to do that. I have respect for that. I suspect there are leftists who would say but when you do that, you're ameliorating some pain and, in a sense, protecting the system against its own tendency to produce more pain. You're also showing that you're a human being who has a sense of human empathy. It's not the only way to show that, but it's one way to show that.
Speaker 1:And for the left as a whole to support reforms which improve people's lives shows that also. Likewise, for the left as a whole to vote for a less evil shows that also. Unless it's done in a way that says Biden's all you can get Biden's the best there is. The Democratic Party is our party. It's what we need. Hey boss is bossing. That's the way it is. Owners owning that's the way it is. Human being gross that's the way it is Right.
Speaker 1:Racism, ethnocentrism, religious bigotry that's the way it is. We can ameliorate all the pain. If that's what we're saying, okay, that sucks. That's false. We should know enough to know that. That's not why we're going to vote. That's not why I won't vote, because I'm in a state where it's not going to matter. I think we'll see.
Speaker 1:But if I was in a swing state and I'd have to vote for Biden and I would do it for the reasons of reducing pain is it going to reduce the pain of the Palestinians to elect Biden? Not directly, but he's probably more possible. I think it is more possible to impact his foreign policies than Trump's, which God only knows what they would lead to. But in any case, I would do it simultaneously saying this is a disgusting, grotesque thing that I have to do and that I'm urging others to do Because our choice is this or something worse, something more evil.
Speaker 1:And the time that it takes us to vote, or, if we're moved to it, the time that it takes us to get out the vote, is time well spent, as long as we're simultaneously advancing what we really do believe in.
Speaker 1:And now let's just point out one last thing.
Speaker 1:When we do advance what we do believe in let's say, in my case participatory society, in somebody else's case participatory socialism, in somebody else's case just socialism, quite vague, or in somebody else's case feminism or anarchism and so on when we do advocate for those things, most of the time we do it to a very small audience and we hope that it percolates out from there In the electoral season. If we can psychologically do both, if we can psychologically engage in the electoral process and advocate for what we really want simultaneously, then we're advocating for what we really want to many more people. The incredible thing is we are not only not sort of ethically compromising on that, we are not programmatically compromising on that either, and we are in fact enhancing our ability to reach out. Doing that. That, to me, is the last, I suppose, clincher argument. I don't know what to call it. I guess we'll see how people decide to engage, who is actually running and what the outcome is in the future. And so, for now and until next time, this is Michael Albert signing off for Revolution darkness.