The most compelling thing said about this election came from a man who’s been dead longer than I’ve been alive:

“If Johnson had been running all by himself, he would not have been acceptable to anyone. The only thing that made him acceptable to the world was that the shrewd capitalists, the shrewd imperialists, knew that the only way people would run toward the fox would be if you showed them a wolf. So they created a ghastly alternative. And it had the whole world — including people who call themselves Marxists — hoping that Johnson would beat Goldwater.”

— Malcolm X on the 1964 Presidential Election, from Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X understood that in politics, the more extreme the perception of differences between Democrats and Republicans, the more likely that fear rather than reason will determine how votes are cast.

True then, true now, so much so that the parallels between Hillary Clinton and Lyndon Johnson on the left side of the ideological spectrum and Donald Trump and Barry Goldwater on the right are too eerie to ignore.

Continue reading “The Tricknology Of Lesser Evilism (Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, And Malcolm X)” →