A(n un)holy fool's case for 3rd parties
on the 2024 election part 2
In the first part of this 2-parter, I wrote about my experience at the Cornel West rally in Harlem.
You should also check out some content from the archive:
-Interview with Gloria Purvis in America Magazine…kinda really important (see footnote for excerpts1).
-On the history of third parties for Catholic World Report, in which I quote friend of the pod Albert Thompson of the American Solidarity Party (see footnote2).
-on J. Cole’s political localism
-on Catholics and the 2020 third party vote
When politics fill the religious vacuum
MANY YOUNG PEOPLE have come [to the Catholic Worker] and worked with us, and they tell us after a while that they have learned a lot and are grateful to us, but they disagree with us on various matters—our pacifism, our opposition to the death penalty, our interest in small communities, and our opposition to the coercive power of the state. You people are impractical, they tell us, nice idealists, but not headed anywhere big and important. They are right. We are impractical, as one of us put it, as impractical as Calvary. There is no point in trying to make us into something we are not. We are not another community fund group, anxious to help people with some bread and butter and a cup of coffee or tea. We feed the hungry, yes; we try to shelter the homeless and give them clothes, if we have some, but there is a strong faith at work; we pray. If an outsider who comes to visit doesn't pay attention to our praying and what that means, then he'll miss the whole point of things.
-Dorothy Day
As we stated in part 1 of this piece, we all know that voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote…that is, if we’re talking on a purely utilitarian level. But this is precisely why the third parties matter. Strict utilitarianism never turns out to be very useful. Life is defined and driven by values that transcend measurements like utility and efficiency. In the end, nothing will be useful, or even functional, when we’ve lost all sense of ideals. In this regard, a vote for the third parties is a witness to this fact. Somebody’s gotta play the prophet, the holy fool.
Yet as much as we need the holy fools who chase after impractical, unrealizable ideals to be a witness to and temper the rest of us who are “realists” (which is to say pragmatists) we surely cannot live in a society of holy fools. We need the pragmatists. I completely respect those whose conscience tells them to choose the lesser of two evils, as much as I respect those whose conscience disallows them from voting (like Dorothy Day).
The problem is, too many people allow their pragmatism to make them equate the political options (which are deeply worldly, which is to say flawed) with “the ultimate.” This sounds like saying: “Trump is more likely to curb abortions, therefore he is the ideal Christian candidate and we must uphold him as our savior, endorsing everything he does in order to get him elected.” Or vice versa. “Biden will protect the unions, therefore he is the ideal Christian candidate and we must uphold him as our savior, endorsing everything he does in order to get him elected.” Do our noble ends justify the means…can we allow politicians’ platforms to completely shape our discourse in order to achieve practical goals (this is the point Purvis made in our interview)?
This temptation is all the more alluring in our “disenchanted age,” where politics as a moral endeavor fills the spiritual vacuum left by secularization. When religion is collapsed into politics, we run the risk of losing any sense of a unifying ideal. If we didn’t live in such a polarized, secularized culture, I’d have less of a problem choosing between the lesser of two evils. When there’s a thick existential foundation undergirding political discourse, we are more free to engage in political disagreements knowing that they don’t constitute the be-all-end-all of public life. Yet this is not that case today, thus the need for the prophetic witness of the third parties.
Ideally (and pragmatically), we need the idealists to be in a continuous dialogue with the pragmatists.
All the same sh*t?
Our followers will recognize that this Substack has been harping lately on a narrative about the threats of abstract (technocratic) power (a la Testori) and social division. Is this the result of sinister elites conspiring behind the curtain orchestrating all of this (a la Fritz Lang’s Metropolis)? We can argue all day as to the origins of today’s social division and concentration of technocratic elite power. Whatever they may be, we can’t deny they are real threats that we can’t afford to be naive about.
Either way, the pervasiveness of these threats make it very difficult for me to take national politics seriously. Even conspiracy theory skepticists are starting to recognize that Baudrillard was onto something when he insisted that everything is becoming a mere simulation. The recent debate opened many people’s eyes to how the presidential campaign feels more and more like a “puppet show” masking more covert, concerning affairs, which engender a variety of meaningless, artificially produced narratives and factions of “controlled opposition” (MAGA, #Resist, etc) to exacerbate our lack of unity.
We live in a consumer society…or so Baudrillard tells us. There are no genuine differences in identities or beliefs in a consumer society—such differences are subsumed by corporate power and homogenized, then replaced with “manufactured” differences. We then “consume” said different options—claiming to be unique, distinct from others…when in reality further entrenching our conformity and foregoing our agency as free individuals. The battle between Biden (the establishment) and Trump (the anti-establishment) is artificial, mass manufactured for our consumption as are the fandoms of Taylor Swift or the Chiefs, being an SJW or a trad cath, a BMW or an electric car driver.
In the past, differences of birth, blood and religion were not exchanged: they were not differences of fashion, but essential distinctions. They were not 'consumed'. Current differences (of clothing, ideology, and even sex) are exchanged within a vast consortium of consumption. This is a socialized exchange of signs. And if everything can be exchanged in this way, in the form of signs, this is not by virtue of some 'liberalization' of mores, but because differences are systematically produced in accordance with an order which integrates them all as identifying signs and, being substitutable one for another, there is no more tension or contradiction between them than there is between high and low or left and right. So, in Riesman, we see the members of the peer group[…]by their continual competition, ensuring the internal reciprocity and narcissistic cohesion of the group. They come together (Latin competere) in the group through 'competition', or rather through what, being filtered through the code of fashion, is no longer open and violent competition - such as that of the market or a physical struggle - but a ludic abstraction of competition.
…
No revolution is possible at the level of a code - or, alternatively, revolutions take place every day at that level, but they are ‘fashion revolutions', which are harmless and foil the other kind[…]It is, rather, by training them in the unconscious discipline of a code, and competitive cooperation at the level of that code; it is not by creating more creature comforts, but by getting them to play by the rules of the game. This is how consumption can on its own substitute for all ideologies and, in the long run, take over alone the role of integrating the whole of society, as hierarchical or religious rituals did in primitive societies.
Is America truly divided, or are we more united to each other than we think—not by bonds of love and solidarity, but by our shared homogeneity?
The diabolical threat of social division
Regardless of your thoughts on what’s behind the “divide and conquer” narrative, I think we can all agree that social division, the “culture wars”–whether intentionally (a la Vigilant Citizen) or incidentally (a la Adam Curtis)–benefit the wealthy and powerful and are a net negative for the masses.
Social division not only breaks down networks of support on a pragmatic level, they also make us feel afraid, powerless, and depressed on an existential level. “Man [or woman, or they/them] was not made to live alone.” The culture wars distract us from what matters most, from looking at our soul and its need for truth, beauty, love, justice…from looking at our neighbors in the face and recognizing their humanity and the fact that we were designed to live in communion with them and to build something meaningful and lasting with them for the sake of the Common Good.
Thus, rather than bicker all day about national politics, perhaps our time would be better spent in building community, getting involved in local politics and civic associations, and actually going out to talk to our neighbors–literally, the people who live closest to you.
Yes, this is all idealistic. I know it’s unrealistic to discount the role that national politics play in our lives. It’s just a reminder that that’s not the end of the story…and that it’s not even the most important (or most interesting) part of the story. This is a point that West continued to bring up about the history of Black communities in the US–which fused political struggles with faith and art, suffering with joy and laughter. We’d do well to learn from the people upon whose back this nation was built and sustained.
In short
I’m not going to tell you to vote for West. Nor am I going to tell you to vote for friend of the pod Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party, whose platform I really can’t find any objections to. Cracks in pomo is not in the business of endorsing candidates, as our mission is existential and aesthetic in nature before it is political or ethical.
All I ask is that you listen to this (sometimes un)holy fool’s case for idealism. Allow me to provoke you to let yourself dream, to desire something that is meaningful in a substantial way, that actually makes you smile and laugh rather than feel drained and miserable.
So start discerning…and don’t let the powers that be replace your conscience.
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We are seduced by temporal power. We fear not being in power, and we fear persecution. But this is what it means to be Christian. We understand that to follow Christ, you’re going to carry a cross. While it would be nice to be in power, it should not be at the price of what is good and holy and true. No political party is perfect. I keep saying that no matter who’s in the White House come Nov. 3, Jesus Christ is still on the throne. We should take comfort in that. What I would call a demonic confusion has been set upon our people, by our making idols out of political parties, and it is only through a recommitment to the Gospel, a recommitment to Christ that we can get rid of this chaos, get rid of this demon.
The background of having a family of Black people living in the United States in the South, in Texas… we never could look to the government for real protection. Having lived through slavery, abolition, reconstruction… the hostility toward our existence, our ability to move about unencumbered and not having the protection of the law. But we still trusted in God, and we persevered. [Why are we willing] to jettison who we are for something as small as temporal political power? Do we serve a mighty God or not? I know that we do. Our role is not to serve political ideology, but to serve Jesus Christ. And that may not mean that we are going to be comfortable. But the Cross isn’t comfortable. As soon as it’s comfortable I start to question whom we are serving.
Many fear that “wasting one’s vote” on a third party is a grave mistake in an election as pivotal as this year’s, but others see such a vote as a chance to change the political direction of the country. Albert Thompson, a delegate of the ASP, argues that “the two major parties have orthodoxies which are really barriers to needed conversations about the present and future. Third parties can offer new ideas, real creative solutions to problems.”
“The two major parties,” he continues, “are exhausted and out of ideas. They are only able to cater to the wealthy special interest groups that control them. Third parties are the outlet for new ideas, the kind the duopoly either deliberately shun or frankly are too out of touch to develop. ”
What are Catholics to make of third parties during the 2020 election? First, as Pope Francis reminds us, “the Church is called to form consciences, not replace them.” Simplistic exhortations to vote based on single-issues or to “not waste one’s vote” can deflect from the arduous work of engaging one’s conscience with the teachings of the Church and the present state of affairs in our country. We might also need to be reminded that civic engagement is not exhausted by voting in presidential elections: the Church’s social doctrine calls us to engage in local politics and participate in communal and civic organizations, all of which are at the service of building up the Common Good.
When deciding how or whether to affiliate with political parties, we might find it helpful to consider Fr. Lugi Giussani’s assertion to fully use one’s gift of reason means to account for the “totality of factors in reality.” As Catholics, let’s help each other to engage with those many factors and make choices accordingly.