this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.
-Hannah Arendt
This is such a rigid and literal way of thinking. This mentality explicitly idealizes and romanticizes black and white thinking. Life has shades of gray, no matter how much you wish it was as simple as literal Good versus Evil
Edit: replied to the wrong comment
I think everyone should pick the best person for the position. But if the only two realistic options are evil and lesser evil. Then I think it’s better if the lesser evil wins than the more evil one.
As seen in last US election, voting for the ideal candidate meant the worse candidate won.
Stop acting like only having two political parties is the only way we can do things. I invite you to step outside the box you are trapped thinking in.
I don’t think we should only have two parties. But with FPTP voting that’s what happens. You need to change to ranked voting system.
Also I think everyone should vote for who they want. Unless it means the worse candidate wins… in FPTP that’s what happens. You need to vote strategically.
It's amazing to me that you could read that quote, and your take, unironically, is exactly the sentiment that Arendt was warning about.
You could easily argue that the guys constantly chosing the lesser evil brought that catastrophic discourse shift over us, that made the lesser evil of this election worse than the worse evil of former elections.
I am not from the US, so my insight there might be limited. But here in Germany I started to hate the lesser evil fraction so much. The lesser evil here is now openly representing far right ideologies, activley supporting genocide, made it borderline illegal to critizise genocid, killing refugees at the borders, deporting people into regions were they face immediate lethal threats, initiating harsh social cuts while demonizing the poor and are discussing cooperation with open fascists. They are constantly normalizing open fascism, everday a little more. If Germany slights into fascism again, it will be mostly the lesser evils fault.
Fuck the lesser evil. They became more dangerous than the fascist themselves in many respects.
It was also Hindenburg and von Papen back in the 1930s, the lesser evil, who was paving Hitler the way to power.
edit: Lol, I startet this meaning to write 2-3 sentences, seems the lesser evil caused a writing frenzy in me.
We got to where we are because we've been choosing the lesser evil, for far longer than 20 years
If liberals hadn't been so content with choosing evil, we'd have avoided the last 50 years of backsliding.
This whole theory has been 100% proven by the current shitshow here in Germany. Everything I wrote has already happened and fascists much, much worse than Trump are currently the first among polls in Germany as a result.
And disproven by the shitshow in the US.
Oh my, if you had stopped voting the lesser evil 20 years ago, you'd not have Trump now. Also, asshole move to derail the discussion by getting impertinent "brain dead" and starting to downvote, simply because you disagree (blocking you for that, as it annoys me).
Factually wrong. We would have had Al Gore instead of Bush, if people voted for lesser evils. We wouldn't have had Nixon or Regan if people voted for lesser evils. Don't comment on our politics when you know nothing of them.
al gore won his election
Unfortunately, he didn't win- because the Electoral College is a sham. We got Bush Jr. who threw us into 20+ years of war, and a bunch of idiots that can't pronounce the world "Nuclear" without adding an extra "U" somewhere in there.
That and supreme court stopping the count and gore not fighting for it.
But now we also have many of the same people from that case on Supreme Court! 😭
so you know people did vote for gore