One of the first things they tell you is “Look where you want to go“. I learned this lesson posthaste, when I took the class, by looking at the pavement and augering the bike right in.

And it works, it makes good sense. If you watch guys who are pros, one sure way to tell an accident is on the way is to see a guy get distracted. A tiny moment’s distraction is more than enough to cause everything to go pear shaped at lightning speed.

This is true of many things in life. Politics and the language of politics is a classic example. Let’s take this specific statement:

“The lesser of two evils is still evil”

This statement is the very definition of a lie; “a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.” The purpose of this statement is to make people believe that voting is useless, the purpose of the statement, in effect, is to cause you to auger into the ground.

These two statements are the functional equivalent of one another:

I will vote for the lesser of two evils.
I will vote for the better of two choices.

The real difference between them is perspective. One assumes that there are two bad choices, and chooses the better one. The other assumes there are two choices, and chooses the better one. The perspective is the difference between a pessimist and a realist, but the end result is the same; the better candidate is chosen. (Before anyone can mess with this, remember that an Optimist’s version of this is ‘These two candidates are so great I don’t know WHICH I should vote for!’)
This is where the system breaks:

“I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils because the lesser of two evils is still evil”

This defies reason. No reasoning person can take this attitude about anything, if they but think about it. First, let’s examine the statement on it’s own legs, so to speak. Yes, the lesser of two evils is still evil. Keen observers will note that it’s also still lesser. The lesser is the issue. By way of illustration, let’s assume we have two candidates for sheriff in your county. Lets also assume that they are identical twins, and they are virtually the same in every respect. This is, of course, ludicrous, that never happens, but for the sake of discussion lets say it has. Lets say their names are Randy and Roger. Randy is a womanizer, a tax cheat, an insurance fraud, a wifebeater, and an all around asshole who never even mows his lawn and has a pile of rusty car parts in his yard. Roger is also a womanizer, a tax cheat, an insurance fraud, a wifebeater, and an all around asshole who never even mows his lawn and has a pile of rusty car parts in his yard. But Roger also hates dogs, and he has a habit of responding to domestic disturbances and shooting homeowners pets.

Clearly, then Randy is the better choice. If you can only see the bad things, you might say that Randy is the lesser of two evils. One way or another, you not only shouldn’t stay home on election day, you have a moral imperative to do everything you can to make sure the dogs in your county are protected from that asshole Roger. That’s what moral imperative means; To use reason to do a thing because it is the moral action. And ALL POLITICS is thus: Find the one who doesn’t shoot the dog.

Of course no two candidates are identical twins- in fact no two are even remotely the same- and to make the statement that “X is JUST AS BAD as Y” is a lie you have to tell yourself to absolve yourself of the immorality you display by not making a choice. The major issue with this is that unless you actually live with a candidate, you can’t have a good idea what that person is like. If you get all your information from common media sources, and you base your decision on that, then tell me what it is about those media sources that allows you to trust them? I don’t trust any of them, at all. It is a foregone conclusion that the media will lie in support of someone they like and lie in denigration of someone they don’t like. Unless you have actual personal experience of the candidates, to make the statement “X is JUST LIKE Y” is to say “I believe what the media tells me about X and Y”

I do not.

I’m not what people would refer to as an optimist; I have been around too long, and I’m painfully aware that the vast majority of humanity is made up of morons. The difference between the “Lesser of two evils” attitude and the “I will make the best available choice” is where you are looking, do you want to move forward, or do you want to auger into the ground?