Is There No Line You Will Not Cross?
** This article appeared in Counterpunch September 14, 2015 ** It is much easier to create a mess than to clean up afterwards. But clean up we must. In his piece for Counterpunch, The Sanders Paradox: a Brief for Bernie , William Kaufman constructs a veritable Augean Stables of illogic, sleight of hand and misrepresentations. His snarky argument in support of Sanders’ bid for the Democratic nomination could be summed up as an embrace of the reactionary aphorism, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” (Fred Baumgarten made the same observation in a Counterpunch article referring to a different Sanders apologia.) The concept, “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” is thoroughly caustic as it can be used to shut down any debate. Find yourself disagreeing with some policy, position or campaign? Hey, the perfect is the enemy of the good. End of discussion. Kaufman doesn’t utter the horrid maxim explicitly, but he thoroughly embraces its essence. Yes, Kaufman