Confusing Labels Of Election Candidates

In my previous article about voting for the lesser evil, I received a lot of flak for using the phrase ‘Lesser Evil‘ to label a candidate of lesser bad reputation in the recently concluded mid-term election. I was thinking that my blog post got criticized because I failed to mention where I got the idea of using the phrase. For this, I wish to quote a Wikipedia entry about the phrase as follows:

“The lesser of two evils principle (or lesser evil principle) is the idea in politics and political science that of two bad choices, one is not as bad as the other and should therefore be chosen over the one that is the greater threat.”

I did try to explain my use of the ‘lesser evil’ label of a candidate in social media group discussions where I participate but some well-meaning discussants suggested that the more civil terms to use are the word ‘good’ instead of ‘evil’ and ‘greater’ in place of ‘lesser’ which when combined will give a voter the choice of a ‘Greater Good‘ instead of a ‘Lesser Evil’ in case the above-quoted principle applies to the situation.

I have nothing against the suggested change of terms to use. My only purpose in clarifying my use of the dreaded phrase is that it was just a literary style to conform with the heated atmosphere of the election campaign period. This brings me to the title of this blog post. What is confusing with the candidate labels as cited above? What if a voter chose the Greater Good who lost the election and another one voted for the Lesser Evil who won the election? Do we say, the Lesser Evil prevailed over the Greater Good? Don’t be serious, I’m just joking.

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