what frustrates me about the interminable conversation about the "lesser evil" and "do you really want Trump to win" isn't just that candidates like Biden are precisely what lesser evil politics gets you, it's that people ignore the way neoliberal hegemony *works*

what happens in country after country is that the right-wing bogeymen come to power and do the initial demolition work, then the center-left comes to power and rebuilds the new system to be more stable, thus cementing that demolition

the latter isn't just an ineffective or insufficient response to the former, it's an integral part of the same movement! it's not like patching a hole in the dike while awaiting more substantial repairs, it's putting a cement ring around it so it can't be resealed

when Obama and other Dem functionaries praise Reagan or GWB, they're not just engaged in a process of historical forgetting, they're acknowledging their own place in a shared lineage

the apparent hostility between the two wings of neoliberalism is real, but it's more like two Viking chieftains squabbling over who gets to lead the raiding party rather than a principled disagreement about whether monasteries should be sacked