5/26/2024

I wanted to write something serious today.

I wanted explain why the “the lesser-evil” argument was bad, and to show that you didn’t need to be a leftist to understand that, and to demonstrate that if your politics always depended on what the other guy would do, you could be made to endorse anything, and that you don’t really believe that politics should operate that way, and that you and I don’t disagree, and that we are reasonable people who can understand each other.

I wanted to be charitable and thoughtful.

I wanted to write philosophically.

I wanted to talk about Bernard Williams and integrity. I wanted to show that because the lesser evil argument is a consequentialist argument, endorsing it repeatedly in the face of what you hold to be of value necessarily means losing your integrity. And that if it means anything at all, liberalism cannot be a politics without integrity. And that because you take liberalism seriously, this should cause you consternation, that it should bother you, that even if you aren’t convinced, you should realize that there’s a pressure there that can’t just be ignored, and that words have meaning, and that it should make you want to gnash your teeth and that…

I saw the headless children, blown up, bloodied corpses, held up like rag dolls, inhuman screams and fire right there on my screen.

What else is there to write about?

I thought about Ivan Karamazov collecting his newspaper clippings to better argue with his brother.

There’s nothing serious about that.