Lesser of Two Evils? Our Fight Is Against Both, No Matter How We Vote

Either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will soon be the president-elect of the United States. In choosing between the two – which we have often been told is the choice between a lesser evil and a greater evil – the American people will also be making a tactical decision about a strategic issue, which is how to maintain American global hegemony, and whether it will be led, or at least represented, by a Quiet American or an Ugly American.These characters are Cold War literary tropes, but we are still living in a bipolar world defined as the opposition between freedom and terror, at least from the perspective of the West. The West is a euphemism for colonialism and empire, but most Westerners are not aware of the euphemistic connotations. This is particularly true in the United States, where the invocation of freedom evokes deep mythological feelings. To be American is to be free, and it is the divine obligation of Americans to maintain their freedom at all costs, as well as to export this freedom everywhere.But the freedom of Americans has always come with the terror Americans have inflicted on others, beginning with the conquest and colonization of Indigenous peoples...