True Freedom

By Michael Wolraich on Mon, 11/03/2014 - 3:52pm |

"There are elections when you choose between A and B, and then there are the more difficult ones when you choose between A and A...You are a liberal, so you do not understand this. In the Russian consciousness, you can choose between A and A and A, and choosing between an infinite number of A’s is true freedom."

-- Aleksandr A. Prokhanov, editor in chief of the Russian nationalist newspaper Zavtra, on the separatist elections in Donetsk

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/world/europe/rebel-backed-elections-in-eastern-ukraine.html

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I get the choosing between A and A and sometimes A. Georgia has been de facto a one party state my entire life and decades before. The label changed from Democrat to Republican but most of the faces remained the same. In one way it was actually better. At the local and state levels your choice is between individuals, not parties or ideologies. You vote for the person you think would be the most competent in the job. At least that is how it was before candidates began running against Washington more than against each other. Now they compete on who can make the most outlandish claims against the Federal government as if it was all that relevant to offices like county clerk or coroner.

by EmmaZahn on Tue, 11/04/2014 - 8:37pm

You vote for the person you think would be the most competent in the job.

Nader proved that people don't do that.

Instead some voters thinking they had a better idea; the result was they got (A) corporatist shill. Corporations Rule both parties.

The people get the ratchet affect because they cant or wont try to get off the treadmill.

The people thinking they could manipulate the deeply entrenched powers.

by Resistance on Tue, 11/04/2014 - 9:24pm

Note the context---when there is really only one dominant political party, ideology is mostly bypassed so you look for other aspects of the candidates on which to base your vote. Again, this applies more to the local and state level candidates.

by EmmaZahn on Wed, 11/05/2014 - 9:26am

That philosophy fails when all the As are crooks. If you can't vote for B, you can't clean house, so cronyism and corruption rules.

The old Southern Democratic machines were very corrupt, and the new Republican machines are getting that way. In Russia, it's much worse of course, but pretty much every 1-party state sinks into a swamp of corruption sooner or later.

And the notion that A and A is "true freedom" is just plain ludicrous, whatever the context.

by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 11/05/2014 - 3:04pm

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