The Green Hill To Die On

For a Morehouse man, Marc Lamont Hill disappoints me greatly as he says he's voting Green and that it's preferable to have Trump to Clinton.

Hill not only talked about his road to success—from dropping out of Morehouse to homelessness, from selling incense on the streets of Atlanta to receiving a Ph.D.—but also made it clear that when it comes to the 2016 presidential election, there is no “lesser of two evils” in our current political duopoly. 

W.E.B. Du Bois said in 1956, “I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist.” Hill takes that philosophy and makes it plain.

The DNC disappointed me because it looked like a Republican convention. … 

“[Democrats] tried to take the patriotism language that the Republicans usually use in their conferences and used it for their own. They talked about war. They talked about the economy in a way that sounded like Republicans from 20 years ago. Part of the reason it was so easy for Melania to jack Michelle Obama’s speech is because they’re all saying the same stuff. 

I’m not scared of Trump. I’m scared of us as a country moving in the wrong direction. … Republicans are always talking about terrorism, but Democrats are playing on a certain kind of terrorism, too. They’re essentially saying, ‘If you don’t vote for us, then you’re going to have Donald Trump and your life will be ruined.’ If you frame that as the choice, you never get to demand what you actually deserve and what you actually want. 

Except for the small problem that a two-party representative democracy doesn't work like that, and that the people do actually decide what they want.  If enough people voted for Jill Stein, she would be president. They're not, and that doesn't make the other 99% of America using fear tactics as terrorists or too stupid to be allowed to vote, it means, as our resident pain in the ass puts it, that Jill Stein has not made the case to the American people.
 

When D.J. Envy asked did Hill “like” Hillary Clinton, he responded unapologetically:

I wouldn’t vote for her. I’m voting for the Green Party. … They’re not going to win this election. But if the differences between the two candidates aren’t vast enough, then I would rather introduce a third candidate to build a movement. Because every four years we say, ‘The third party can’t win.’ So we never invest in the third party. We never grow the third party. If they get 5 percent of the vote, they can be in the debates. And if they’re in the debates, now we can change the conversation. 

After Envy said that Democrats voting third party would take votes away from Clinton, ultimately paving the way for a Donald Trump presidency, Hill laid the truth on the table: 

I would rather have Trump be president for four years and build a real left-wing movement that can get us what we deserve as a people, than to let Hillary be president and we stay locked in the same space where we don’t get what we want..

I am terribly tired of this argument, that somehow anyone pointing out the very real damage that Donald Trump would do to our country should be dismissed as promoting "fear-mongering".  It's not fear-mongering given his own statements and behavior.  Keeping him out of the White House should be a no-brainer and yet we have people who still haven't figured out that the country will be greatly diminished with Trump in the Oval Office.  Fire burns things, and people who point out that fire, if used incorrectly, can cause great damage aren't called "fear-mongers" by National Park Rangers

The cost to pay for a coalition based on stopping a Trump presidency in 2020 is too high to pay, particularly since we can easily stop it now before said presidency ever happens here in 2016, but I don't have a Ph.D. like Marc here.

Guess I'm just a fear-mongering fear-monger.