You probably won't want to read a piece by John Pilger in which he argues that apartheid didn't come to an end but still exists in South Africa and indeed globally, when what he means by this is that capitalism and severe inequality still exist there and globally. You don't have to. But you may like to know that the man continues to be afflicted by a thought pattern he displayed eight years ago, not long before the 2004 US presidential election. This is the one according to which the left might do better with a worse outcome than with a better one. Pilger writes:
Liberal hysteria that the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, is more extreme than Obama is no more than a familiar promotion of "lesser evilism" and changes nothing. Ironically, the election of Romney to the White House is likely to reawaken mass dissent in the US, whose demise is Obama's singular achievement.
Ah, 'lesser evilism' - so naïve; we should vote for worse in order to inspire ourselves more effectively. Pilger ends by calling upon us to surrender our fantasies. You first, John.
