A quick lunchtime blog so that I can bookmark this post from Ali Eteraz on HuffPo re Obama. Ali suggests that we should vote for Obama because he is Nietzschean:

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher. In the nineteenth century he predicted that over the next two centuries, the philosophy of nihilism — purposelessness and despair — would take over the Western world, leading to an unprecedented level of violence and world-wide war. Obviously he was correct.

However, Nietzsche only made this prediction so that he could also posit a way of defeating nihilism. He put his faith in Art.

To be more specific, Nietzsche recommended that the way of defeating nihilism was for each individual to treat his or her life as an ongoing and unfinished work of art. The simple work of “giving style” to ourselves, expressing to the world our “overflowing creativity,” would give us a way to “Say Yes to Life.” This, argued Nietzsche, would stifle nihilist pessimism.

There’s more for the inclined.

I quoted this section in particular because I (like hundreds of thousands of Oprah fans) have been reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth and am seeing a parallel between the discussion of ego in that book and personal attachment to candidates, as indicated by this Gallup poll that says that many Clinton and Obama supporters will vote for McCain if their candidate isn’t elected.

I’m sympathetic…I really am finding some of what’s going on on behalf of Hillary problematic (Richardson as Judas?! Really?). But as Josh Marshall writes in TPM:

But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one’s ego-investment in one’s candidate far outstrips one’s interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one’s position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.

Me? I will vote for Hillary if she’s the candidate. But either way, I think I will do a lot more thinking about making my life an ongoing and unfinished work of art.