We will decide the future of our state and nation tomorrow.
Some argue we will decide the FATE of our nation tomorrow.
We harken back to the story of an English stable owner in the 16th and 17th Centuries who had forty horses, leading customers to think they could choose one from among the forty. But the stable owner allowed only the horse in the first stall to be rented, believing that he was keeping the best horses from always being chosen.
Customers believing they had many choices actually had only one. Take it or leave it, even if neither was desirable.
The stable owner was named Thomas Hobson, whose name is preserved in the phrase “Hobson’s Choice,” meaning only one thing is really offered while it appears there are other choices and it isn’t particularly desirable.
Many believe that is what we are facing tomorrow, a Hobson’s Choice.
We’ve all survived the weeks of rhetoric, weeks of misstatements and lies, or misinformation from insiders and outsiders on our social media, weeks of efforts to denigrate competing candidates and competing issues.
We have listened to the two sides paint the picture of the other side. And after listening to all of that noise we have concluded that we have these choices at the top of the ticket:
—A candidate who claims to be middle-class child of immigrants whose party has been branded as Marxist and Socialist and a threat to our democracy by the other party.
—A felon, a congenital liar and narcissist whose party is backing him despite complaints that he wants to emulate Hitler and other dictators and is a threat to our democracy.
Thomas Hobson would be greatly entertained. Take it or leave it when neither choice seems to be desirable.
The political process seems to have given us horses in the first of two stalls in a stable full of better mounts that we can’t have.
This might not be any help to you at all, but let’s skim the surface of the two possibilities.
Both Karl Marx and Adolph Hitler wrote books: Marx’s Das Kapital, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Marx is described as “a German-born philosopher, political theorist, economist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.” The description is from Wikipedia, which serious researchers caution should not be considered original research. It is an amalgam of the evaluations done by others presumably well-acquainted with a subject. So, We are going to rely on one of Wikipedia’s sources, English historian Gareth Stedman Jones, whose work focuses on working class history and Marxist theory and who wrote in 2017 in the journal Nature:
“What is extraordinary about Das Kapital is that it offers a still-unrivalled picture of the dynamism of capitalism and its transformation of societies on a global scale. It firmly embedded concepts such as commodity and capital in the lexicon. And it highlights some of the vulnerabilities of capitalism, including its unsettling disruption of states and political systems… it [connects] critical analysis of the economy of his time with its historical roots. In doing so, he inaugurated a debate about how best to reform or transform politics and social relations, which has gone on ever since.”
The same resource describes Hitler as “an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator” of Germany under the Nazi Party that “controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship.” He wrote his book in prison while serving four years for treason after a failed coup in 1923. The book outlined his plans for Germany’s future, the main thesis being that Germany was in danger from “the Jewish peril,” a conspiracy of Jews to gain world control. It is considered a book on political theory. “For example, Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world’s two evils: communism and Judaism…Hitler blamed Germany’s chief woes on the parliament…Jews, and Social Democrats, as well as Marxists, though he believed that Marxists, Social Democrats, and the parliament were all working for Jewish interests. He announced that he wanted to destroy the parliamentary system, believing it to be corrupt in principle…”
So there you have it. A choice between an economic theorist whose theories challenge our capitalistic society and a political theorist who used every means necessary to be an all-powerful manipulator of a political system, including mass incarceration and murder of undesirables.
You might have a different evaluation for these two whose partisans have stereotyped each other throughout this campaign.
We had a coworker who once observed, “Stereotypes are so useful because they save a lot of time.”
In American politics, stereotyping saves the voters a lot of thinking.
And that’s too bad.
From our lofty position, we offer this thought;
Economic theories are abstract offerings that do not imprison or murder those who differ from them. Political theories can create tangible results that, taken to extremes, can produce (in order) division, disrespect, control through, if necessary, mass incarceration and—-at the very worst—murder.
We have two politicians to think about tomorrow. It’s too bad none of the others in the stable are available. It’s take it or leave it time.
Which Hobson’s Choice are you going to make?
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