For various reasons, I avoid political campaigns. I just can’t get excited about them, in part because electoralism has so thoroughly colonized the US left. In a healthy intellectual culture, its predominance would be automatic cause for skepticism. Unfortunately, these days sickness feels compulsory. Rejecting electoralism invites disdain and derision.
Amid the bickering on the US left about the utility of voting, a compromise usually emerges: voting is merely a form of damage control that one performs every few years before returning to the serious stuff. But the rhetoric of voting supersedes the physical act. In turn, elections have become a nonstop preoccupation. The off-season no longer exists.
Continue reading “Andom Ghebreghiorgis and the Limits of Left Electoralism”