Lesser of Evils Still Pandora-Level of Evil

A bunch of good folks I sincerely like and respect will take part in the farcical, biennial public relations competition that masquerades as representative democracy in this country. Most of the people I happen to know will vote for candidates of the Democratic Party. I think they are making a big mistake. If these people, like me, believe in things like that the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and its bombings and/or targeted assassinations - either way, war crimes - in Pakistan and Yemen are illegal and, more importantly, immoral; that the public should not subsidize business costs while corporations privatize profit; that the short-term interests of corporate shareholders in the US should not be placed above the long term interests of the larger community, especially with respect to climate change and the survival of the species; and that the "international community" is more than just Washington and whoever happens to agree with it, see, e.g., Iran's enriching of uranium and Israel's occupation of Palestine, etc. etc.; then they are voting for a party that holds fundamentally inconsistent views and goals. I don't understand the desire to do such a thing. Perhaps it's a desire to not feel small and inconsequential in the world, to not feel like you've been lied to your whole life, or worse, that you believed the lie. Maybe it's the desperate grab of the lever that retains some symbolic meaning in the face of increasing atomization and alienation, a silent cry that whispers, "things are not that bad, we're just a ways off from justice and egality, this act absolves me while at the same time keeping me safe from the consequences of real action." I don't know what the reasons are at this point, and I don't really care. I do know that there is one business party in the US, with two factions that are more different in personality than substance, and that this business party is fanatically committed to a highly sophisticated class war at home and a brutally violent imperial empire abroad (where corporations have replaced viceroys). And I think that the sooner the educated, white, liberal professional class that is my peer group comes to realize this, the sooner the cannibalization of the Democratic Party can occur and a new, legitimate opposition movement will foment. The only time I'm voting soon is for Palin/Beck 2014.