Election thoughts
So, as we sit amongst the facebook election madness – and it’s been unusually rabid this cycle, for a whole host of reasons, I find myself thinking of the fact that we’re all flawed.
Now, every election cycle, it seems we spend a lot of time underlining how flawed both of the candidates are – and whatever ideology you subscribe to, it tends to make you minimize the flaws of your horse while thinking that the flaws of the other horse are the worst things that there could ever be. And I don’t doubt that one horse can run a race better than another – or else we wouldn’t have horse races. I’m sure there are people who would argue that I’m more flawed than any of the current crop of individuals who would like to be steering the boat whilst feeding from the public trough. I’m not actually sure – I’m not even sure if you can reasonably measure flawedness.
Ironically, the least flawed of the field from my point of view, Bernie, couldn’t even get a seat at the table. I still can’t tell whether this is because of a corrupt system, people who lack vision, or some other aspect. And I have no doubt that Bernie has his own set of flaws. Anyone who wants the job has got to be more than a little bit cracked.
But, I keep reminding myself, for all the warts in all the candidates we have running for office, they’re all human beings just like you and me. They have their hurts, their doubts, their flaws, and their moments of triumph just like any of us. It’s tempting to demonize the horse that doesn’t match your chosen ideology, but I am not sure that’s wise. Among other things, you’re possibly encouraging your neural network to set up notch filters that highlight their flaws while downplaying their good sides.. and it’s possible I’ve gone so far in this direction that my experience of Trump is somewhat locally synthesized. There’s no easy way to tell (see many previous discussions on the nature of our minds and the nature of reality)
In any case, it would be nice if we could dial back the insanity a couple of notches. No one deserves to be firebombed over this whole thing. It’s also worth noting that some of the split between the horses and the horseraces is the result of different ideas of utopia.. the farmers and rural folks have their thing, and the cities have theirs. But, in this world we live in, the farms and the cities need each other. Big agribusiness depends on big technology.. all us folks in the city genetically engineering crops, making fuel, making robot tractors – and big population depends on big agribusiness.
But we want and need different things. I’m not really sure what the solution is, but I’m certain that firebombing each other’s political campaign headquarters is *not* the solution, nor is threatening to put our opponents in jail, nor is attempting to shut down free speech.
I don’t know why I worry about these things. I don’t get the sense that the world at large is listening to me. Occasionally I wonder what it would be like to wake up and discover that I’d been slashdotted and my web server was cranking out hundreds of megabits of content. And, honestly, it could happen tomorrow. Or never. The world is unpredictable that way.
I try to be less flawed every day. I hope that all the horses in all the horseraces do too. And I hope that they are as aware that they are flawed as I am aware that I am.
October 17th, 2016 at 4:00 pm
That is one reason I am avoiding FaceBook currently. I really don’t like both how much political stuff is there, and, a sadness for me, just how into it I get. Also, I get aggravated at posts that are (to me) obviously manipulative, which pulls me in further trying to UN-manipulate friends and family, generally unsuccessfully.
I’ve said for a long time that anyone who /wants/ to be President of the United States should be immediately disqualified on the basis of insanity. More recently I have come to a more moderate stance, because I realized that such a position is highly subjective. Perhaps there are those people that would work excellently and happily in such positions: with the stress, the pressure, the responsibility, the distorting press, the lack of privacy, the budgeting, the impossibility of being alone, having to put every bit of your work past Congress for approval, the international interaction, balancing on the line between what is right and what the majority tells you (while considering if that is a real majority or a lobbyist majority)… but I am so very much not one of those people, so it is difficult to grok.
I agree that we should not seek fault, should not seek negativity, and should be aware and empathetic that we all have faults, we’ve all made mistakes, and we all have our own races to run, that we shouldn’t necessarily be so concerned with other’s races.