November 1, 2020: Vote: The Either-Or Conundrum
Either-Or is a category. That can be a good thing, but one might consider if it’s truly an “or” and a strict category instead of degrees allowing for “and.” Hoo-nōs
At its heart, democracy is about winning or losing with grace, while keeping our eye on behaviors before and after elections. It also requires some degree of knowledge about what the real issues are as well as having a functional bullshit meter.
Centrating on one facet of a problem is fine if there is only one important distinction—that’s a category. Driving right behind a semi at freeway speeds is not healthy if one’s mind wanders. Otherwise, other variables have to be taken into account—that’s not a strict category. It is not just the health of one’s stock portfolio, or if one isn’t sick, or if one is privileged, or if one doesn’t like being regulated, or having taxes raised or lower, etc. Can we have a vibrant economy and still protect ourselves from things like a pandemic? We’d better consider this won’t be the last time. Is it between shutting down or opening up–maybe we can do both? Is it just about individual freedoms or not—maybe we can have both individual and civic freedoms? Is it about raising taxes or not—maybe we might consider what we gain, instead of how we’re infringed upon? Is it about judging based on surface-ism—maybe we can consider substance instead of “looks”? Trying to discover if we gain from change can be challenging and it may not be instantaneous. In such situations, we have to consider decentrating—to focus on more than one consideration.
In principle, we make regulatory laws not to take away freedoms, but to preserve them. Yes, we don’t always do it right, but that fact doesn’t simply mean a conspiracy to screw other people. Can we live well with such regulations or is it more important to just be pissed in being told what needs to happen? In any case, we need to keep the filing straight, the premise correct, or we risk creating false categories and putting people and notions in them as an organizational strategy. That’s an error and a wobbly construct, not a considerate, inclusive observation. An interpretation is not a fact, though we all may have noticed many have presented interpretations as though they were facts. We do not need a state-of-the-art bullshit meter to figure that out.
November 3 is a national election. At stake is a country run by a minority, because we decide such issues based on the majority who actually vote—and that’s pretty consistently a minority of those who could legally vote. What’s that cost? What’s also at stake is the wellbeing of each and all of us.
Okay, here’s a real either-or and one with an impact: Vote or not. Figure it out. That’s a voice. We have a choice who we will hire. It’s not a fun choice, but it’s a clear choice this time around, I’d offer. Even if one didn’t know in 2016, how could it not be obvious now—one only needs a run-of-the-mill bullshit detector. We were and are duped. Okay, so now what? Make sure we have categories like enemies and friends, winners and losers? That would mean we haven’t learned and will be chasing traveling tent-carnival barkers and pseudo prizes again (no offense to legitimate entertainment and honest living).
I’m not much into using my voice so I can sway people, and I’m not there now. But a call to consider the BS is a conversation. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion, but I’m not presenting that opinion as a fact. So here is that opinion: We made the worst hiring-a-president decision in my lifetime (I didn’t just fall off the turnip wagon) and from historians, I hear maybe the worst ever in U.S. history. We’ll find out as we go through. I’m voting to cast out the incumbent president, but we are deciding goodness-of-fit for president and congressional offices, not whether someone is simply a winner or a loser. Language to the contrary is just bullshit. And yes, sometimes—many times—hiring the best choice is annoying because we often don’t have better choices available. But a decision to hire or not is not based on a single variable.
If we cannot get our act together and quit being singularly impressed by alpha-males, and the illusion that power means being right, and that chasing gold is the compass heading, we’re deciding as very young children might (no offense to very young children). Thinking that someone who has power and gold means being graced by God, makes us delusional as a culture. Then the only reason for others to pay attention to us is because we’re an IED waiting to go off. That’s not the principle of democracy, however painful it is to be voted down. Like all decisions, we may learn we screwed up and have to edit our position. That’s not being a loser, that’s continuing to try and get it right and abandoning static categories of winners or losers. If we got something right, we can have our dignity, if we didn’t, we can have our dignity. Democracy is about granting that dignity and keeping it as a bedrock.
Anyway, go vote and do so with consideration for more than one variable. We’ll discuss more after we know our decision.
Note to the two or three who may occasionally read this stuff: Any comments and replies appear below the blog in question, usually about a month later.
- By Travis Gibbs
- on Oct, 31, 2020
- eThoughts
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