Voting for Satan or Lucifer may be the mantra of political pundits and political operatives but it doesn’t inspire a devoted and active electorate.
But how much evil can America stand? Can she make progress if election after election the choice is between the candidate who will do the least harm and who is second worst when it comes to lack of character and trustworthiness?
“The ruling elite, along with the Black-misleadership class, have done all they can to create a dormancy and a dormant consciousness, and a sense of nihilism and apathy among the broad masses of suffering Black people, and to distract them, through images of, quote, ‘successful Black people,’ ” observed Dr. Anthony Monteiro, an adjunct political science instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, during the Democratic National Convention.
“Now tragedy has led to an awakening, but we can only go forward if we produce a new leadership, a leadership that is prepared to sacrifice and combine heart and mind towards a common purpose, the freedom of our people.
“I think out of this we will produce the next generation of James Baldwins, and Martin Luther Kings, and Assata Shakurs, and Angela Davises, and on and on, and on. That revolutionary leadership is in the making, as we speak. The tragic side will be combined with the positive side, of the emergence and formation of a new consciousness, and with that consciousness, a new revolutionary leadership,” predicted Dr. Monteiro.
Even the Republicans are trying to figure this out: Earlier in the year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Said in an interview that a Clinton-Trump general election match-up “represents picking the lesser of two evils.”
The subject was part of a heated debate on Democracy Now during the DNC between Princeton professor Eddie Glaude and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson. Prof. Dyson agreed with Prof. Glaude’s assessment of Hillary Clinton as “the poster child of the corporate takeover of the Democratic Party,” but in a “choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,” he’s encouraging Blacks to vote for Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Dyson’s argument was “a vote for Hillary Clinton preserves” the voice of the Black community. Others, including Bernie Sanders’ delegate, Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab Association of New York, agreed Mrs. Clinton is the face of corporate greed and control. But they fear a Donald Trump administration will have far worse domestic consequences.
Khaled A. Beydoun, of the Barry University school of law, argues America’s eight million Muslims find themselves in a dilemma over “a candidate that frames much of his campaign on anti-Muslim animus and hysteria, and another whose political track record reveals a hardline approach to policing Muslims at home and punishing them abroad.”
Fear Mr. Trump will deliver on anti-Islam campaign rhetoric is pushing many Muslim Americans toward Mrs. Clinton, without taking into looking at her support of the Patriot Act, counter-radicalization programming in the Middle East and military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria, he said. These facts may portend even more dire consequences with Mrs. Clinton as commander in chief.
Underneath the “moderate Muslim” sup-port framed during the DNC “is a full-fledged commitment to expand localized anti-terror programs that link religiosity to radicalization, seed informants in community mosques and cultural centers, and enhance the surveillance of urban, Muslim-American enclaves across the country,” wrote Mr. Beydoun recently for Al Jazeera.
And while Mrs. Clinton has shown deference and offered a platform to the Mothers of the Movement, women who have lost children in high profile police shootings or killings in Black neighborhoods, it was young Black activists who confronted Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders on the campaign trail who forced them to speak up on the issue of police abuses and fatal police encounters with Blacks. Many of these young people plan to stay in the streets and outside of the voting booth. They have little belief in change through the current candidates and system. “We speak of God with so much conviction but turn and be content with the lesser of two evils. Would God deal with evil at all?” asked hip hop artist David Banner on Twitter. “Absolutely not. I will not choose the lesser of two evils. I have no obligation to participate in an immoral outcome,” declared Black Republican Tara Setmayer, a CNN political commentator and party stalwart, with disdain for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump.
“What agenda is on the table of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party that speaks for your interests? The old guard wants to maintain the status quo. But the new generation says, ‘to hell with the status quo, we ain’t with the establishment, Black Lives Matter. That’s wise,” said Ishmael Muhammad, national assistant to Min. Louis Farrakhan, speaking live July 31 at Mosque Maryam in Chicago. “Do you hear what you are saying? ‘We got to at least vote for the lesser of two evils.’ But do you hear what you are saying? You still voting for evil. So what’s the difference? The Devil is running and Satan—isn’t it the same evil? And the best we can tell our people is ‘ah we gonna have the devil so you might as well vote for him?’ ” he asked. “Hillary can’t win without the Black vote and Trump doesn’t care. That man energized the Republican base that brought out in the primary 14 million more than any other time in history. White folks feel their America has been taken from them. They’re right. But it certainly wasn’t us. … America is in deep trouble and so are we if we don’t get out of the way.”