No One for President 2016

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This year’s presidential election cycle has drawn into clear focus the irrationality of our collective political decision-making.  With no admirable candidates running for the most important office in the world, otherwise bright, thoughtful people have been forced to retreat to party affiliations or unimportant candidate attributes to decide who to support in this race.

While “The Donald” has trouble with anything beyond bald, fifth-grade level assertions laced with fantasy in his extemporaneous speeches, Hillary carefully parses her phrases to stave off the indictment she so richly deserves for FBI confirmed misuse of our country’s secrets and continuous recounting of her fantastic beliefs about how those secrets were handled.  Where on Earth does one find inspiration or comfort in Donald’s assurances that everything will be "huge" or "great" or Hillary’s abject denial of mistakes she made that everyone has watched.

We don’t.  We retreat to other decision-making practices.  Many of us base our voting decisions on our perceptions of the parties these candidates represent. That these perceptions are likely as flawed as the candidates themselves makes little difference; we do it, anyway. 

These strongly held perceptions are referred to as memes by many scientists and philosophers these days.  These memes often take on the controlling force formerly reserved for the most controlling of ideas, religion. There’s quite a lively debate afoot in the philosophical world about whether or not we have free will if we are encumbered by strong memes that influence, outside our recognition, what we want to want. While organized religion has historically had the best meme generating machinery, memes of all sorts have enjoyed increased amplification with the growth of mass media and social media. Ideas pass at light speed looking for fertile minds to populate.  Once those ideas take root, we identify (note the memetic use of that word) as Progressives or Libertarians or Evangelicals or feminists or Catholics or Jews or, or, or. 

This identification makes candidate selection a much easier matter than weighing the attributes and flaws of individual candidates.  We’ve watched as the Republican Party has worked at forcing the “Republican meme” to garner support for its nominee among candidates who might have freely chosen a different candidate or no vote at all.  We’ve watched as Hillary has reinforced the “first female President meme” in an effort to capture more of the female vote than she might otherwise get.

If we are to make an attempt at choosing rationally between two demonstrably unworthy candidates during this election cycle, I guess the best we can do is try to imagine which of the prevaricators says he/she intends to lead the country in a direction we favor, and then hope the substance of that articulated intention actually drives the candidate’s behavior…not the self-aggrandizement or enrichment that seem to be significant drivers for both candidates today.

"What Difference Would it Make?"

“What difference would it make?”

Yesterday, I listened to a speech delivered by President Obama in the aftermath of the Orlando massacre.  As we have come to expect, it was a well-delivered speech including an argumentative section during which the President exhibited an uncommon level of emotion.

After appropriate remarks of sorrow and condolence over the unconscionable mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando the President turned his focus unexpectedly to the presidential campaign.  Specifically, he chose this occasion to address the persistent insistence of some that the President call the perpetrators of these unimaginable attacks “radical Islamic terrorists.” 

The President’s ire became increasingly evident as he asked repeatedly, “What difference would it make if my administration called the perpetrators radical Islamic terrorists?” After each rhetorical use of the question, he wondered if it would make a difference in the numbers of sortees that have been flown against the terrorists, or the number of terrorist leaders who’ve been killed, or the number of our troops who have given their lives in this war on terror, and so on.

He repeated earlier explanations of his choice of terms that are free of religious reference by generally asserting that use of the term Islam in the phrase some would prefer…radical Islamic terrorists…would cast aspersions on the world’s entire, enormous Muslim population to the delight of the terrorists.

At the end of the speech, I again admired the President’s ability to deliver remarks clearly and forcefully, but I was left with only two possible conclusions about the real answer to his question, “What difference would it make if my administration called the perpetrators radical Islamic terrorists?”  Either he didn’t know the most important answer to his own question, or he didn’t think his audience was sufficiently astute to go beyond his assertions to find the more important answer.

We have been busy for some time killing the agents of the real enemy that is challenging the western way of life.  The enemy is a radical ideology derived from the Islamic faith.  While it is likely that derivation is perverse, it has occurred, and it is the worldview that is leading terrorists to horrific acts of violence against hundreds of innocent people.  It is the ideology that is the real enemy, and while we can kill the agents of that ideology with armament, it is unlikely we will kill the ideology physically.

The difference it would make if this administration called our present danger radical Islamic terrorism is that it might then focus sufficient attention on considering how to stem the growth of this Middle Age ideology as we continue to try to kill those who hold it.

See the associated cartoon.

The Game is Rigged

I must admit to taking perverse delight in watching two powerful people discover and publicly decry the fact that “the game is rigged.”

Bernie Sanders, a US Senator, who has long enjoyed the benefits of the rigging of the game for those in positions of political power, rants daily about the advantages the rigged financial system enjoys and that his competitor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has exploited to her personal benefit.  Of course, he’s right, big banks enjoy advantages that others don’t share, and those advantages are not intended to benefit the culture at large.  Those advantages have their roots in years of legislation crafted and supported by the very businesses they affect.

Donald Trump, a successful businessman, who has demonstrably enjoyed the benefits of countless rigged systems, is discovering that the RNC has created rules that give them authority over the electoral process that he finds undemocratic.  No doubt he’s right.  It’s pretty likely that the Republican apparatchiks have kept to themselves enough ultimate control over the nomination process to ensure their own survival in times of challenge to the precepts they, personally, hold dear.  I was reminded of the great chasm between votes and elections when my son sent me a quote attributed to Mark Twain, “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’tallow us to do it” in response to a related cartoon.

As one who came late to understanding the oppressive nature of government intrusion on ordinary business practice, I have yelled and screamed just like Bernie and Donald every week for the last seven years.  The difference between the world I see, and the world they see is profound, however.  Each of them has discovered a rigged system that’s disrupted their otherwise highly privileged lives.  Each of them has lived in a world made better by the rigging because they are beneficiaries of many of the laws, rule, and regulations that suppress behaviors of others.  Bernie doesn’t have to live with ObamaCare, and Donald certainly enjoys tax loopholes that don’t benefit us mere mortals.

The difference between these perspectives presents a fully different worldview.  Bernie and Donald look across the top of a sea of bureaucratic soup by which they are largely unaffected and rail loudly about a ripple in that sea that is temporarily distressing to them.  Most of us live well below the surface of that sea and look continually into the increasingly murky, unending soup of bureaucratic challenge to our business lives.  It’s a remarkably exasperating view.  I feel true empathy for those at the very bottom of that sea.

And then there’s Hillary.  She’s likely relieved that various systems are rigged.

Why Do We Need to be Shrill?

I’ve noticed recently that the weather announcers have started reporting predicted temperatures as wind chill figures, in many cases never predicting actual temperatures.  Wind chill measures are not universal, and their intent is to indicate what the temperature at the predicted wind speed, minus the assumed speed of the general movement of the person, would feel like on the exposed skin of a person.  While this smacks of subjectivity, there have been some efforts at instrumental measurement of the factor.

More interesting to me is the media’s apparent need to report more extreme temperatures than plain old dry bulb air temperatures.  This represents just one more case in which shrill, or hyperbolic presentation, has become more common than calm, or pacifying, presentation.

Recently I’ve watched a bear try to eat Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant; I’ve watched heads exploded in Thirteen Hours; I’ve listened to accounts of a machete butcher in Columbus, Ohio; and I’ve watched the political debates of both parties.  No elements of our media are immune to the tendency to increase the distance between the experiences of ordinary life and the tone and tenor of their stories.  Why is that?

Is the competition for our attention so great that only the most outrageous have a chance of gaining it?  Are we, in fact, drawn to the most bizarre, heinous, and extreme stories and reports?  Have we become so indifferent to ordinary stories that we pay them no heed?

No doubt there are those reasons and others that I can’t imagine. As I write this, days after the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the President has announced that he will do as one would expect him to by making an appointment, and the President of the Senate has done as one would expect of him announcing his unwillingness to confirm a  nominee during an election year.  The commentators on all networks and cable channels are promising a “battle royale,” “a fierce political fire fight,” and the like over what will simply be another election year stalemate surrounded by righteous pronouncements on all sides.

One must wonder if the impact of this incessant escalation of anger, violence, and the extreme in the media that surrounds us day by day plays some role in the apparent increase in angry, violent, and extreme behavior we witness more commonly.  I’d suggest that by bringing stories continually framed in the extreme into the common vernacular the media outlets are major drivers of a growing callousness when regarding the extremes and increasing inability to reach consensus through ordinary discussion.

I suspect I’m just showing my age when I long for the days of Walter Cronkite, and other real journalists, and predicted temperatures expressed in degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius without the subjective overlays of wind chill and heat index factors.

Busted at the Border

Yesterday I returned from Thetford Mines, Quebec.  Thetford Mines was once the world’s largest asbestos mine site.  The countryside there is a moonscape of giant piles and ridges of dark gray gravel and mine tailings.  It’s a bit reminiscent of Iceland’s dark gray lava.  But this is not what my blog today is about.

Clearing Canadian Customs on the way into Quebec was a brief, fairly pleasant matter.  Where are you going?  Where are you from?  What will you do in Canada?  How long will you stay?  Have you been here before? Have a nice day.

Returning through US Customs after a nice visit to Thetford Mines proved to be a truly unique experience. I pulled up to the window where a woman stood.  She had very red hair with each hair surely exactly 1 ¼” long.  She said sternly, “pull up to the stop line."  I complied.  I smiled and greeted her as I handed over my passport.  Smiling didn’t seem to be in her repertoire of facial expressions; no greeting was returned. 

Without ever looking at me she asked, “where have you been?”  Thetford Mines on business. “What business?”  Pellet boilers.  “Do you buy them or sell them?”  Well, both really.

By now she had opened the backdoor of my car and was unzipping my suitcase.  I guess that’s OK, and there was nothing for her to discover that would be problematic.

“Did you sell any?” No, not on this trip. “Hey, what’s in that garbage bag back there?”

I laughed right out loud when I recalled forgetting to take the garbage from the back of the Jeep to throw it in the dumpster before leaving for Canada the day before.

“Garbage,” I said. I laugh about ‘most everything, so I laughed as I told her of my wife, Elaine’s, habit of tossing the garbage in the back of my car before work and my frequent failure to remember to put it in the dumpster until it smells or an inordinate number of flies appear.

She was incensed that I found this humorous.  “This isn’t funny.  You won’t find it funny when I send you back to Canada.”  I began to imagine myself trying to go back through Canadian Customs and trying to avoid explaining that I had to go get rid of my American trash.

The back door of the Jeep opened and “Red” began rummaging through the garbage in the several day old garbage bag.  “This is disgusting.”  I’m sure it is; it’s several days old.  “It’s mostly potato and carrot peels; those are OK.”  Jesus, we can import some garbage but not other garbage?

She resealed the bag.  “This looks all right.  If I’d found Clementine peels I would have sent you back to Canada.  If you take those out of the country, you can’t bring them back!”

She handed me back my passport, and I drove off laughing like a fool and feeling ever so much safer.