Selling Out for Idealism: Bernie Supporters Have a Whale to Catch
Bernie supporters are beginning to sound a lot like Captain Ahab.
Since Hillary clinched the presumptive Democratic nomination a few weeks ago, I’ve watched the party fall to shambles around my feet. Social media is bursting with rage, vast hordes insisting that they will vote third party before voting for her. While it may seem from the polls that Clinton is likely to win in November, I’m not so sure that’s the case.
Today, a top post on Reddit stated emphatically that voting for a third party is preferable to voting for Clinton. Across my Facebook feed, disgruntled would-be Bernie revolutionaries shake their digital fists with the same sentiment. Never mind that a vote for a third party has historically always split the ballot, allowing the other side to win. Never mind that a vote for a third party is still not a vote for Bernie. That’s all just dandy, they say, as long as we get to stomp our feet and stick our tongues out at Hillary for a brief moment before President Donald J. Trump is sworn into the most powerful office in the free world.
Thematically, I cannot help but fixate on a favorite film of mine as a pop culture analog to this situation in Star Trek First Contact. Toward the climax of the film, the situation has boiled down to a single decision. Captain Picard must either destroy his own ship to defeat the unstoppable Borg army, or fight the encroaching enemy, who would simply steamroll over him, and then go on to assimilate Earth. He is confronted by a character from Earth, who tells him, “Ahab’s gotta hunt his whale, huh?” At this suggestion, Picard lets loose a spittle-laced speech, espousing the merits of taking a stand: “They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back! The line must be drawn here. This far, no further!” (I’ve embedded the full scene above. It’s very good.)
Eventually, of course, Picard realizes that going out in a blaze of idealistic glory would be foolish. He initiates the self destruct, and evacuates the ship.
The parallels between Picard and the Bernie supporters seem glaring. We have a group of people who are willing to allow our country to be assimilated by Donald Trump, as long as they get to make a pouty face and stomp their feet and go down fighting. It’s true that in this analogy, Hillary is the self-destruct sequence. However, that makes her the lesser of two evils. Self destructing the ship means saving the world. Voting for Clinton means saving America from Trump. And, as others have pointed out, most of the horrible things people say about here are hearsay at best.
“If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it.” So sayeth Herman Melville in description of Ahab. This November, let us set aside our harpoons for the good of this nation. If you love your country, push the self destruct and save it.
