Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Gangale
It began with a dig at Donald Trump, short enough to "tweet:"
In political science #Trump is what we call an outlier, well outside the bounds of past data. Less scientifically, he's an out and out liar.
An acquaintance of many years who tends to vote Republican responded, "If your against lying, then who are you voting for based on that? It can't be Hillary. If it is you just negated your own argument."
Not at all. Everyone lies sometime. That doesn't mean that we should condone lying, nor does it mean the we should equally condemn all liars, for then who would be left to utter even the smallest truth? As Hamlet quipped, "Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?" Thus it is incumbent upon each of us to judge who lies the least. In this presidential election, I am more than satisfied as to the identity of that candidate, but admittedly the bar is not set very high, more is the pity.
"Sounds to me like a Ph.D. stating we should vote for the lesser of two evils."
If we weren't friends, your initial remark could easily be taken as ad hominem. I'm 9 months away from earning my doctorate in juridical science, insh'allah.
However, let's examine your implied premise that we should not vote for the lesser of two evils, and let us further stipulate, as I know from personal experience, that you are a good man. If you vote for the greater evil, then you are complicit in its triumph, and as a good man you will not do that. If you do not vote at all, then you are also complicit in the triumph of evil, for as Edmund Burke observed, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." As a good man, you should do something. However, voting for the lesser of two evils is not your only option. There will be several other candidates for president on the ballot in November. So, let's posit a choice between supporting the lesser of the two major party evils versus the minor party candidates. Whether evil or good, since the latter have no chance of winning, voting for one of them has very nearly the same utility as doing nothing if your objective is to deny evil its triumph. It's a feel-good, thrown away vote. So, according to rational choice theory analysis, you should vote for the lesser of two evils.
"At its most basic level, behavior is rational if it is goal-oriented, reflective (evaluative), and consistent (across time and different choice situations). This contrasts with behavior that is random, impulsive, conditioned, or adopted by (unevaluative) imitation." --Wikipedia, "Rational choice theory"
"Impulsive, conditioned, or adopted" describes the voting of most of the electorate. Were this not so, possibly our available choices would be between the greater of two goods, although Lord Acton might argue otherwise: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Hillary Clinton has political power, but operating within a political system of checks and balances, she has never wielded absolute power. In contrast, as either the sole owner or majority owner of his business enterprises, Donald Trump has enjoyed nothing but absolute power throughout his life. He diverts attention from his own absolute corruption by ranting about "crooked Hillary."
My great-grandmother used to state emphatically that she never read any of the dozen or so San Francisco newspapers which published in her day because they were full of lies and politics. I do not know whether she intended an ironic redundancy or that the latter was worse than the former.
Thomas Gangale's Lies and Politics
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