Cranky Old Men

Most of us are familiar with a grandpa, uncle, or father who eventually turns into a cranky old man during late middle age or in his dotage. (Why is it a mostly male phenomenon?) In the last three decades, Clint Eastwood typecast himself as a cranky old man, building on lone-wolf characters (mostly cops, criminals, and cowboys) established earlier in his career. In real life, these guys spout talking points absorbed from mainstream media and narrative managers, or if they are truly lazy and/or can’t articulate anything coherently on their own, merely forward agitprop via e-mail like chain mail of yore. They also demonstrate remarkably forgivable racism, sexism, and bigotry, such as Eastwood’s rather enjoyable and ultimately redeemed character in the film Gran Torino. If interaction with such a fellow is limited to Thanksgiving gatherings once per year, crankiness can be tolerated fairly easily. If interactions are ongoing, then a typical reaction is simply to delete e-mail messages unread, or in the case of unavoidable face-to-face interaction, to chalk it up: Well, that’s just Grandpa Joe or Uncle Bill or Dad. Let him rant; he’s basically harmless now that he’s so old he creaks.

Except that not all of them are so harmless. Only a handful of the so-called Greatest Generation (I tire of the term but it’s solidly established) remain in positions of influence. However, lots of Boomers still wield considerable power despite their advancing age, looming retirement (and death), and basic out-of-touchness with a culture that has left them behind. Nor are their rants and bluster necessarily wrong. See, for instance, this rant by Tom Engelhardt, which begins with these two paragraphs:

Let me rant for a moment. I don’t do it often, maybe ever. I’m not Donald Trump. Though I’m only two years older than him, I don’t even know how to tweet and that tells you everything you really need to know about Tom Engelhardt in a world clearly passing me by. Still, after years in which America’s streets were essentially empty, they’ve suddenly filled, day after day, with youthful protesters, bringing back a version of a moment I remember from my youth and that’s a hopeful (if also, given Covid-19, a scary) thing, even if I’m an old man in isolation in this never-ending pandemic moment of ours.

In such isolation, no wonder I have the urge to rant. Our present American world, after all, was both deeply unimaginable — before 2016, no one could have conjured up President Donald Trump as anything but a joke — and yet in some sense, all too imaginable …

If my own father (who doesn’t read this blog) could articulate ideas as well as Engelhardt, maybe I would stop deleting unread the idiocy he forwards via e-mail. Admittedly, I could well be following in my father’s footsteps, as the tag rants on this blog indicates, but at least I write my own screed. I’m far less accomplished at it than, say, Engelhardt, Andy Rooney (in his day), Ralph Nader, or Dave Barry, but then, I’m only a curmudgeon-in-training, not having fully aged (or elevated?) yet to cranky old manhood.

As the fall presidential election draws near (assuming that it goes forward), the choice in the limited U.S. two-party system is between one of two cranky old men, neither of which is remotely capable of guiding the country through this rough patch at the doomer-anticipated end of human history. Oh, and BTW, echoing Engelhardt’s remark above, 45 has been a joke all of my life — a dark parody of success — and remains so despite occupying the Oval Office. Their primary opponent up to only a couple months ago was Bernie Sanders, himself a cranky old man but far more endearing at it. This is what passes for the best leadership on offer?

Many Americans are ready to move on to someone younger and more vibrant, able to articulate a vision for something, well, different from the past. Let’s skip right on past candidates (names withheld) who parrot the same worn-out ideas as our fathers and grandfathers. Indeed, a meme emerged recently to the effect that the Greatest Generation saved us from various early 20th-century scourges (e.g., Nazis and Reds) only for the Boomers to proceed in their turn to mess up the planet so badly nothing will survive new scourges already appearing. It may not be fair to hang such labels uniformly around the necks of either generation (or subsequent ones); each possesses unique characteristics and opportunities (some achieved, others squandered) borne out of their particular moment in history. But this much is clear: whatever happens with the election and whichever generational cohort assumes power, the future is gonna be remarkably different.

Calling All Directors

The old saw goes that acting may be just fine as a creative endeavor, but given the opportunity, most actors really want to direct. A similar remark is often made of orchestral musicians, namely, that most rank-and-file players would really rather conduct. Directing and conducting may not be the central focus of creative work in their respective genres. After all, directors don’t normally appear onscreen and conductors make no sound. Instead, they coordinate the activities of an array of creative folks, putting directors in a unique position to bring about a singular vision in otherwise collaborative work. A further example is the Will to Power (associated with Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer) characteristic of those who wish to rule (as distinguished from those who wish to serve) such as regents, dictators, and autocrats. All of this sprang to mind because, despite outward appearance of a free, open society in the U.S., recent history demonstrates that the powers that be (PTB) have instituted a directed election and directed economy quite at odds with democracy or popular opinion.

The nearest analogy is probably the directed verdict, where a judge removes the verdict from the hands or responsibility of the jury by directing a particular verdict. In short, the judge decides the case for the jury, making the jury moot. I have no idea how commonplace directed verdicts are in practice.

Directed Election

Now that progressive candidates have been run out of the Democratic primaries, the U.S. presidential election boils down to which stooge to install (or retain) in November. Even if Biden is eventually swapped out for another Democrat in a brokered nominating convention (highly likely according to many), it’s certain to be someone fully amenable to entrenched corporate/financial interests. Accordingly, the deciders won’t be the folks who dutifully showed up and voted in their state primaries and caucuses but instead party leaders. One could try to argue that as elected representatives of the people, party leaders act on behalf of their constituencies (governing by consent of the people), but some serious straining is needed to arrive at that view. Votes cast in the primaries thus far demonstrate persistent desire for something distinctly other than the status quo, at least in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Applying the cinematic metaphor of the top paragraph, voters are a cast of thousands millions being directed within a larger political theater toward a predetermined result.

Anyone paying attention knows that voters are rarely given options that aren’t in fact different flavors of the same pro-corporate agenda. Thus, no matter whom we manage to elect in November, the outcome has already been engineered. This is true not only by virtue of the narrow range of candidates able to maneuver successfully through the electoral gauntlet but also because of perennial distortions of the balloting process such as gerrymandering, voter suppression, and election fraud. Claims that both sides (really just one side) indulge in such practices so everything evens out don’t convince me.

Directed Economy

Conservative economists and market fundamentalists never seem to tire of arguments in the abstract that capitalist mechanisms of economics, left alone (unregulated, laissez-faire) to work their magic, deliver optimal outcomes when it comes to social and economic justice. Among the primary mechanisms is price discovery. However, economic practice never even remotely approaches the purity of abstraction because malefactors continuously distort and game economic systems out of self-interest greed. Price discovery is broken and equitable economic activity is made fundamentally fictitious. For example, the market for gemstones is famously inflated by a narrow consortium of sellers having successfully directed consumers to adopt a cultural standard of spending three months’ wages/salary for a wedding band as a demonstration of one’s love and devotion. In the opposite direction, precious metal spot prices are suppressed despite very high demand and nearly nonexistent supply. Current quoted premiums over spot silver price, even though no delivery is contemplated, range from roughly 20% to an absurd 2,000%. Supply and demand curves no longer function to aid in true price discovery (if such a thing ever existed). In a more banal sense, what people are willing to pay for a burger at a fast food joint or a loaf of bread at the grocery may affect the price charged more directly.

Nowhere is it more true that we’ve shifted to a directed economy than with the stock market (i.e., Wall Street vs. Main Street). As with the housing market, a real-world application with which many people have personal experience, if a buyer of a property or asset fails to appear within a certain time frame (longer for housing, shorter for stock, bonds, and other financial instruments), the seller is generally obliged to lower the price until a buyer finally appears. Some housing markets extraordinarily flush with money (e.g., Silicon Valley and Manhattan) trigger wild speculation and inflated prices that drive out all but the wealthiest buyers. Moreover, when the eventual buyer turns out to be a bank, corporation, or government entity willing to overpay for the property or asset using someone else’s money, the market becomes wholly artificial. This has been the case with the stock market for the last twelve years, with cheap money being injected nonstop via bailouts and quantitative easing to keep asset prices inflated. When fundamental instabilities began dragging the stock market down last fall, accelerating precipitous in early spring of this year and resulting in yet another crash (albeit brief), the so-called Plunge Protection Team (PPT) sprang into action and wished trillions of dollars into existence (taxpayer debt, actually, and over the objections of taxpayers in a classic fool-me-once scenario) to perpetuate the casino economy and keep asset prices inflated for the foreseeable future, which isn’t very long.

The beneficiaries of this largesse are the same as they have always been when tax monies and public debt are concerned: corporations, banks, and the wealthy. Government economic supports are directed to these entities, leaving all others in the lurch. Claims that bailouts to keep large corporate entities and wealthy individuals whole so that the larger economy doesn’t seize up and fail catastrophically are preposterous because the larger economy already has seized up and failed catastrophically while the population is mostly quarantined, throwing many individuals out of work and shuttering many businesses. A reasonable expectation of widespread insolvency and bankruptcy lingers, waiting for the workouts and numbers to mount up.

The power of the purse possessed by the U.S. Congress hasn’t been used to help the citizenry since the New Deal era of FDR. Instead, military budgets and debts expand enormously while entitlements and services to the needy and vulnerable are whittled away. Citizen rebellions are already underway in small measure, mostly aimed at the quarantines. When bankruptcies, evictions, and foreclosures start to swell, watch out. Our leaders’ fundamental mismanagement of human affairs is unlikely to be swallowed quietly.

The Man Who Knew Too Little

That man is me. Thrice in the last month I’ve stumbled headlong into subjects where my ignorance left me grasping in the dark for a ledge or foothold lest I be swept into a maelstrom of confusion by someone’s claims. This sensation is not unfamiliar, but it’s usually easy to beat back. Whereas I possess multiple areas of expertise and as an autodidact am constantly absorbing information, I nonetheless recognize that even in areas where I consider myself qualified to act and/or opine confidently, others possess authority and expertise far greater than mine. Accordingly, I’ve always considered myself a generalist. (A jack of all trades is not quite the same thing IMO, but I decline to draw that distinction here.)

Decisions must inevitably be made on insufficient information. That’s true because more information can always be added on top, which leads to paralysis or infinite regress if one doesn’t simply draw an arbitrary line and stop dithering. This is also why I aver periodically that consciousness is based on sufficiency, meaning “good enough.” A paradox exists between a decision being good enough to proceed despite the obvious incompleteness of information that allows for full, balanced analysis, if fullness can even be achieved. Knowledge is thus sufficient and insufficient at the same time. Banal, everyday purchasing decisions at the grocery store are low risk. Accepting a job offer, moving to a new city, and proposing marriage carry significant risks but are still decisions made on insufficient information precisely because they’re prospective. No way of knowing with certainty how things will turn out.

Updates to Blogroll 03

Adding one, revising one. The added one is The Daily Impact, written by Tom Lewis, author of a couple books warning of the collapse of industrial civilization. Lewis appears to be a news junkie, so posts are often torn from the day’s headlines. He’s a good read and not afraid to be sardonically funny. The revised one is The Compulsive Explainer, written by Hal Smith. Blogs come and go, and I had thought that The Compulsive Explainer had stopped being updated last summer, but I see that the author merely switched from WordPress to Blogger without any indication. I suspect Smith isn’t much read (if commentary is a useful measure) but probably deserves to be, not least for his ex patriot perspective.

Because this entry is so slight, there is considerably more unrelated content beneath the fold.

Reverse Robin Hood

Brief, uncharacteristic foray into national politics. The Senate narrowly approved a tax reform bill that’s been hawked by that shiny-suit-wearing-used-car-salesman-conman-guy over the past months as simply a big, fat tax cut. From all appearances, it won’t quite work out that way. The 479-pp. bill is available here (PDF link), including last-minute handwritten amendments. I don’t know how typical that is of legislative processes, but I doubt rushing or forcing a vote in the dead of night on an unfinished bill no one has had the opportunity to review leads to good results. Moreover, what does that say to schoolchildren about finishing one’s homework before turning it in?

Considering the tax reform bill is still a work in progress, it’s difficult to know with much certainty its effects if/when signed into law. However, summaries and snapshots of tax effects on typical American households have been provided to aid in the layperson’s grasp of the bill. This one from Mic Network Inc. (a multichannel news/entertainment network with which I am unfamiliar, so I won’t vouch for its reliability) states that the bill is widely unpopular and few trust the advance marketing of the bill:

Only 16% of Americans have said they think the plan is actually going to cut their taxes, less than half the number of people polled who think that their bill is going to go up, according to a Nov. 15 poll from Quinnipiac University.

Yet it seems the Republican-led effort will be successful, despite concerns that many middle class people could actually see their taxes rise, that social programs could suffer, that small businesses could be harmed and that a hoped-for economic boom may never materialize. [links removed]

When a change in tax law goes into effect, one good question is, “who gets help and who gets hurt?” For decades now, the answer has almost always been Reverse Robin Hood: take (or steal) from the poor and give to the rich. That’s why income inequality has increased to extreme levels commencing with the Reagan administration. The economic field of play has been consciously, knowingly tilted in favor of certain groups at the expense of others. Does anyone really believe that those in power are looking out for the poor and downtrodden? Sorry, that’s not the mood of the nation right now. Rather than assisting people who need help, governments at all levels have been withdrawing support and telling people, in effect, “you’re on your own, but first pay your taxes.” I propose we call the new tax bill Reverse Cowgirl, because if anything is certain about it, it’s that lots of people are gonna get fucked.

Too Close for Comfort

Predictions are fool’s errands. Useful ones, anyway. The future branches in so many possible directions that truly reliable predictions are banal, such as the sun will rise in the east, death, and taxes. (NTE is arguably another term for megadeath, but I gotta reinforce that prediction to keep my doomer bonafides.) Now only a few days prior to the general election finds me anxious that the presidential race is still too close to call. More than a few pundits say that Donald Trump could actually win. At the same time, a Hillary Clinton win gives me no added comfort, really. Moreover, potential squabbles over the outcome threaten to turn the streets into riot zones. I had rather expected such disruptions during or after the two nominating conventions, but they settled on their presumptive nominees without drama.

Polls are often predictive, of course, and despite their acknowledged margins of error, they typically forecast results with enough confidence that many voters don’t bother to vote, safe in the assumption that predicted results (an obvious oxymoron) make moot the need to actually cast one’s vote. (The West Coast must experience this phenomenon more egregiously than the East Coast, except perhaps for California’s rather large population and voting power. Has Hawaii ever mattered?) For that reason alone, I’d like to see a blackout on polling in the weeks leading up to an election (2–3 ought to do), including election day. This would allow us to avoid repeating the experience of the Chicago Daily Tribune publishing the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” back in 1948.

Analysis of voting patterns and results also dissuades voters from considering anything other than a strategic vote for someone able to actually win, as opposed to supporting worthy candidates polling far enough behind they don’t stand a chance of winning, thus reinforcing a two-party system no one really likes because it keeps delivering supremely lousy candidates. Jesse Ventura, having defied the polls and been elected to office as an independent, has been straightforward about his disdain for the notion that voting outside the two main parties is tantamount to throwing away one’s vote. A related meme is that by voting for independent Ralph Nader in 2000, the Democratic vote was effectively split, handing the win (extraordinarily close and contestable though it was) to George Bush. My thinking aligns with Jesse Ventura, not with those who view votes for Ralph Nader as betrayals.

If the presidential race is still too close for comfort, Michael Moore offers a thoughtful explanation how Trump could win:

This excerpt from Moore’s new film TrumpLand has been taken out of context by many pro-Trump ideologues. I admit the first time I saw it I was unsure whether Moore supports Trump. Additional remarks elsewhere indicate that he does not. The spooky thing is that as emotional appeals go, it’s clear that Trump connects with the people powerfully. But Moore is right about another thing: to vote for Trump is really a giant “fuck you” to the establishment, which won’t end well.

Traffic Report No. 10

This blog of mine (nearing 10 years old) is in need of something besides ranting and complaining. Time to organize another traffic report.

Since my previous report, rather than reining myself back to 3–4 paragraphs per entry, I’ve gone the opposite direction and begun breaking entries into 3- or 4-part series. The “more” html tag is used with some frequency, and an addendum post is not unusual, as I always think of more to write. Seems to be lots of ideas to unpack and argue, even though commentary remains minimal. Which brings me to another development. Since telling other bloggers to stop subscribing so that I’ll go look at their blogs, my subscriber count has more than tripled and is now up to 626. If even half of those subscribers read my new posts when notification is sent, The Spiral Staircase would be getting regular traffic spikes. But that’s not happening. Rather, I’m ignoring them, and they’re ignoring me, which is fine with me; I’m not a whore self-aggrandizing personality trying to drive up meaningless numbers via social media.

The Filipino cohort searching, finding, and clicking on my post about Scheler’s Hierarchy continues to account for the most traffic. When I blog about doom and collapse, Global Risk Report (an aggregator) sometimes picks up my post and refers traffic. A week’s traffic these days varies from 50 to 250 hits, which is a five-fold difference but still nothing in comparison to other blogs. So how about that collapse? Some believe in a fast, tumultuous crash, others in a slow, incremental fading away that only looks like a crash when viewed from the vantage of considerable hindsight (e.g., the Fall of the Roman Empire). Although I don’t discount the possibility of the fast scenario (should banks in particular seize up), it seems that the corrective mechanisms keeping the house of cards standing but wobbling madly are effective to forestall the worst for now. The slope still points down, but we’re still only just over the crest of the wave.

And finally, considering that today is Thanksgiving in the U.S., what can I be thankful for? All the usual, no doubt: hearth, health, food, and friends. That’s absolutely for real, not some sort of snark. But knowing what I know, I often wonder what to wish for, considering all the conventional American desires (wealth, fame, influence, etc.) feed back into the culture as character distortion. Further, the longer industrial civilization persists, the worse it will be for whatever life remains on the other side of the bottleneck. Whereas some counsel resistance and even sabotage to hurry things along, the behemoth is so great by now that it will eventually fall under its own weight. My active contribution to that eventuality, whatever attitude and behaviors I adopt, is minuscule to the point of irrelevance (sorta like voting). So while the lights stay on and there’s air to breathe (unlike China), I suppose simple thanks for this life we enjoy is plenty enough for me.

Crystallizing the Moment (redux)

I have always remembered a striking line from the movie The Dancer Upstairs where the police investigator, who is tracking the leader of Shining Path in Peru in the 1980s, says (paraphrasing from Spanish), “I think there is a revolution going on.” Elsewhere on the globe today, Arab Spring has morphed from a series of U.S.-instigated regime changes into an emerging Arab state (ISIS), though establishing itself is violent and medieval. According to Tom Engelhardt, even the U.S. has a new political system rising out of the ruins of its own dysfunction. Unless I’m mistaken, a revolution is a political system being overthrown by mass uprising of the citizenry, whereas a coup is a powerful splinter within the current regime (often the military wing) seizing administrative control. What Engelhardt describes is more nearly a coup, and like the quote above, it appears to be coalescing around us in plain sight, though that conclusion is scarcely spoken aloud. It may well be that Engelhardt has succeeded in crystallizing the moment. His five principal arguments are these:

1. 1% Elections — distortion of the electoral system by dollars and dynasties.
2. Privatization of the State — proper functions of the state transferred into the hands of privateers (especially mercenaries and so-called warrior corporations — nice neologism).
3. De-legitimization of Congress and the Presidency — fundamental inability to govern, regulate, and/or prosecute at the Federal level, opening up a power vacuum.
4. Rise of the National Security State (Fourth Branch of Government) — the dragnet complex revealed (in part) by whistle-blower Edward Snowden but plain to see post-9/11.
5. Demobilization of the American People — surprising silence of the public in the face of such unwholesome developments.

Please read the article for yourself, which is very well written. (I am no great fan of the journalistic style but must acknowledge that Engelhardt’s work is terrific.) I especially like Engelhardt’s suggestion that a grand conspiracy (e.g., New World Order) is not necessary but that instead it’s all being improvised on the run. Let me offer a couple observations of my own.

Power has several attributes, such as the position to influence events, the resources to get things done, and the ability to motivate (or quell) the public through active management of perception. High offices (both government and boardroom, both elected and appointed) are the positions, the U.S. Treasury and the wealth of the 1% are the resources, and charismatic storytelling (now outright lying) is management of perception. Actors (a word chosen purposely) across the American stage have been maneuvering for generations to wield power, often for its own sake but more generally in the pursuit of wealth. One might assume that once personal wealth has been acquired motivations would slacken, but instead they divert in not a few psychopaths to maniacal building of multigenerational dynasties.

Pulling the levers of state in one capacity or another is a timeworn mechanism for achieving the proxy immortality of the American statesman. However, as dysfunction in the political arena has grown, corporations (including banks) have assumed the reins. Despite corporate personhood being conferred and recently expanded, largely via judicial fiat, the profit motive has reasserted itself as primary, since there is no such thing as a fully self-actualized corporation. Thus, we have the Federal Reserve System acting as a de facto corporation within government — but without conscience. Multiply that hundreds of times over and voilà: an American corporatocracy.

The effect has been extrapolated in numerous movies and television shows, all offering dystopic warnings of things to come where people, domestic and alien, are all expendable as power seeks to perpetuate itself. How far this can go before financial collapse, climate change, energy scarcity, or a host of others looming calamities overtakes is yet to be seen. Some hold out hope for true revolution, but I believe that possibility has been contained. Considering how the world has been accelerating toward ecocide, I venture that at most a few more decades of desperate negotiations with fate are in store for us. Alternatively, I find it entirely feasible that the delicate web of interconnections that maintain life in all its manifestations could suffer a phase shift rather quickly, at which point all bets are off. Either way, in no one’s wildest imagination could our current civilization be considered the best we can do, much less the best of all possible worlds.

Giving Back to the People

rant on/

I’m usually content to allow abstention to be my protest vote, but in the latest round of municipal elections here in Chicago, I have been sufficiently motivated to cast my protest vote (via absentee ballot, meaning it won’t even be counted until after all the shouting is done). So what motivates me to break my voting silence? Simply put, the mayor (small m, always small).

Chicago’s Feb. 24, 2015, municipal election might as well be called the 2015 Mayoral Re-Election considering what’s at stake and how the outcome is mostly a forgone conclusion thanks to modern polling practices. Besides re-electing the mayor, three other officials are running unopposed (varies by precinct/ward) and there are four pointless nonbinding referenda. Pretty slim ballot. We already know that four challengers to the incumbent mayor will mostly likely share the minority vote and thus be unable to force a runoff necessary to focus on just two candidates (or one viable challenger). My interest in removing Rahm Emanuel from office (an intent echoed plainly by his challengers) stems mainly from reporting in The Chicago Reader by Ben Joravsky. I trust Joravsky’s view of local issues, published in an independent newspaper, far more than anything that might appear in the city’s two leading rags (The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times — no links), both of which I ignore. The lesser influence is Kari Lydersen’s book Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago’s 99%. I admit I haven’t read the book (I refuse to wade into that sewer) but I have read reviews, which are a nearly unanimous chorus of disgust at “Rotten Rahm.”

All this brings me back yet again to wondering why public office is a desirable destination. Half of the political rhetoric is about “taking back” (for the people), acknowledging that government at all levels has been hijacked, while the other half is “giving back” (to the people), a presumed bourgeois (Kennedyesque) devotion to public service shared only by those who are decidedly not bourgeois (read: rich, powerful, and insulated from the masses). It’s largely incumbents on one side, challengers on the other, but that’s not wholly true, as Illinois’ newly elected and installed governor (small g, always small) was a challenger. I find it difficult to judge motivations; results are more transparent. The nastiness of the results, judged individually and over time (since the early 1980s is a typical jumping off point when political economics are discussed), demonstrate that it’s been a radically uneven system of rewards and punishments. The underclass and minorities (large overlap there) are by turns abandoned to their fates and punished for their lack of success, the middle class continues to be squeezed out of existence by policies and practices that proceed with the inexorable power of demographics, and the rich get the spoils. It’s unclear whether any challenger to Chicago’s current mayor will act for or against the people, just as next years’ presidential (small p, always small) election will likely shape up as battle of political intents and promises, but I’m all for moving on from those whose results clearly demonstrate a different battle being waged and won.

rant off/

Update: Well, color me surprised! The incumbent mayor (small m, always small) failed to achieve a majority, so there will be a runoff election in April against top challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. I couldn’t be more pleased. Even the media is reporting on Rahm Emanuel’s flailing attempts to polish the turd that is his administration. I guess a $16 million campaign war chest and rebranding effort proved insufficient to overcome all the bad faith he has earned over the past four years.

Abstention from Voting

/rant on

Today is election day in the U.S., and political noise levels have been raised modestly in preparation for the big event, expectation of the GOP gaining a Senate majority being perhaps the most significant result telegraphed for credulous voters. Of course, since candidates now run permanent campaigns (Hillary Clinton has been running for president for more than 20 years, don’t let her coyness about it fool you), including nonstop fundraising, noise levels are always at high volume. Although I watch no TV (the preferred medium of political debate) and see none of the attack ads, I hear plenty of complaints that no candidate runs a campaign on issues anymore but instead relies on being the less heinous of (generally) two miserable alternatives. Indeed, whenever I hear politicians making speeches or being interviewed, their inability to answer a straight question before diverting to perception management (true of pundits, too) is notable. Political speech aimed at redefining reality is so commonplace that nary a place exists where an honest citizen can turn for effective analysis before being confronted by a noxious, smothering fog of rhetoric.

One of the principal features of the lead-up to election day is idealistic insistence on the duty of the citizenry to cast their votes, often accompanied by the risible contention that an individual who abstains from voting has no right to complain for not participating in the charade (shades of Heinlein’s jingoistic parody “Service Guarantees Citizenship”). I reject the foolhardy notion that voting buys the right to speech and/or opinion. It’s obvious that, instead, money buys everything. Nevertheless, free speech precedes the act of voting, no matter what others say, at least until shouted down and squelched by political correctness and incipient fascism. From a strategic perspective, the mechanisms by which actual elections are carried out ought to dispel any thoughtful person from bothering, which many don’t — especially with midterm elections.

As I got to work today, “Please vote!” campaign volunteers were yelling candidate’s names at passersby. For what? To sway the vote at the eleventh hour? Sheer name recognition, not policy or intelligence or character, is interrelated with incumbency and celebrity as predictors of electoral success. But these pale in comparison with well-publicized reports of ballot buying, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and brazen vote stealing (inside electronic voting systems) to indicate the pointlessness of voting. Yet de rigueur exhortations to get out the vote and vote, or better yet, make campaign contributions (“give ’til it hurts” is sometimes heard), continue to lend false legitimacy to a corrupted system of self-representation that no longer pretends to function. The so-called “silent majority,” people who don’t use the ballot box to vote their hates, recognize the futility of voting when results are no longer (if ever they were) an accurate expression of voter intent. Whether a candidate wins or loses or an initiative passes or fails hardly matters, too, when the results are so indistinguishable. Take, for instance, continuous attempts to undermine and/or repeal Roe v. Wade and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare).

Some commentators have observed that Republicans in particular are cravenly insistent on holding office (yet do nothing constructive once there), and further, are hell-bent on destroying everything just so blame can be assessed against Democratic opponents, whereas Democrats are passive onlookers unable to thwart the destructive impulses of the general public (e.g., voting against self-interest) and mean-spirited political actors. While the two-party system denies us worthwhile candidates, voting for more of the same would be the putative definition of insanity: repeating the same steps unvaryingly but expecting different results.

/rant off