In about 4 hours, I'm heading out on the road to ann arbor, by way of cleveland. Obviously, no blogging until then. I suppose it's not that important to say 'i will be away from my blog' these days, now that I blog sporadically, but whatever. I'll do it anyway. I'm a bit worried that I have a six-hour drive ahead of me, and really not that much sleep under my belt. I'm simply not sleepy -- I tried lying down upstairs, but it was more interesting to go downstairs and microwave two burritos. Soon I'll go back and lie down some more, perhaps until 2am, which is when I mobilize. I doubt I'll sleep, though. I can feel this afternoon's headache creeping back. I'm going to hit the 7-11 repository of iced coffee drinks fairly hard on my way out, just so I don't fall asleep at the wheel.
I did it once, driving back from poughkeepsie when I was 20. I remember a 'sonic youth' song was playing on the tape deck, and I just sort of fell asleep while sitting behind the wheel, and the song became part of my dream. Then, my head hit the window, and I woke up. I came to a stop, and saw that I had hit the median strip, and blown out my tire. I replaced it with a spare, drove to nearby filling station, re-inflated the blown-out tire, put it back on, and drove home. One of those weirdly fortuitous things that only happen to the young. I have other examples, but they'd probably freak people out.
There have lately been a lot of complaints on the SDF bulletin board, perhaps obviously, about the new bush regime and its implications for the rest of the world (SDF is comprised of about half non-us members, I'd say). Anyway, I got tired of it and responded thusly:
How would any nation act under similar circumstances? The united states is a very powerful country, and its acts of self-preservation have wide-ranging repercussions. But are other countries so fundamentally different?
Do we really have a progressive international brotherhood of man, joining hands while they shake their heads sorrowfully at that one rogue country?
Or is it more that all nations act in their own self-interest, and the usa happens to have the economic and military resources to do it effectively?
It would seem that bush is the better choice for an admittedly self-interested usa.
'Whose side are you on, anyway?'
It's important to remember that my political views depend largely on my mood. Right now, I'm in a pretty shitty mood.
It looks like bush, who rejected the kyoto protocol, is going to win this election. This is ironic because of a recent finding in climatology that states that the 'big melt' of polar ice caps, due to the very emissions bush is unwilling to curb, is on its way. More precisely, by 2100 it's likely that we won't have any polar ice at all during the summer. here are some related articles, in case you don't like 'technology india.'
The polar ice caps melting isn't all bad, though -- for one thing, it will allow easier access to petroleum and natural gas reserves for more drilling (which in turn will produce more emissions, and damage things further, but the united states' corporate interests have never been accused of being 'forward thinking').
It looks like armageddon really might be on our doorstep, 'our' in this case referring to 'the planet's.' I know this is silly, but mainly I just feel bad for all those polar bears who are going to go extinct.
Wow, how shameful; this week's blogging has been 100% political thus far. I'll have to change that the next time I blog.
I just got back from voting! It was fun. My mom woke me up at 7:30 or so, but I informed her that I could just walk to the polling place myself later in the day. I did, at around 10:15. I was dressed in my grubby sweatpants, greasy, stand-up hair, orange t-shirt, backpack, and sandals. Standard fare. I cut through the backyards of the really big, expensive houses that surround me, and ended up at the st. Rose of lima community center and church in about five minutes. There was absolutely no line, everyone was really nice, the voting machines were paragons of usability, there were many names on the presidential ballot, and I got an 'i voted!' sticker. It also says 'yo vote!' the whole experience was really very montgomery county: sterile, friendly, smoothly-operated, and sort of plastic.
Who did I vote for? Did I vote for kerry and do my part to remove bush from office for the sake of the international community? Did I vote for a 3rd party candidate and 'send a message'/'vote for democracy'? Or did I vote for bush and stick it to the bush-haters, and give me something to blog about?
Indeed, who?
For whom did I vote? This is technically correct, but no-one talks this way, unless they want to alienate everyone and appear to be weird. Usually, I'm careful about using object forms of pronouns where needed and not ending sentences with prepositions. But 'who did you vote for?' rolls off the tongue better than 'for whom did you vote?' it's just, y'know, one of those things -- common-law grammar at work.
In the past 50 years or so, we've been seeing fewer and fewer media endorsements of monogamy and marriage. In fact, something like the opposite message has become common: marriage never works, everyone gets divorced, it's impossible to make that big a compromise and live your life together with one person, humans aren't designed that way, etc. Monogamy does seem silly to me -- why would people, who are naturally cooperative, friendly, gregarious creatures, pair off broodingly with just one other of their kind and hide in a cave for the rest of their days, largely rejecting depth and closeness in other relationships, be they sexual or not? Monogamy doesn't seem like a good strategy for mental health. It doesn't really seem like a good strategy for anything, with one exception: The Children. Monogamy exists for the sake of kids, who need a pair of people who care about them largely because they are made from the pair's genetic code. Parents are helpful to children, and what better way to ensure parental care than if the parents are physically related to the children? Genetic parents instinctively care for their kids, and therefore theoretically make good nurturing parents.
The problem is, we as a species no longer need to reproduce. One might argue that any species needs to maintain a subsistence rate of reproduction, but in fact there are too many of us -- we need to reproduce at a reduction rate. There is no logical reason for humans to make more of themselves, for the species is not endangered. Far from it; humans are overrunning the planet, and are permanently altering the biosphere and ecosystem so that they can continue to live in the ways to which they are accustomed, and at the same time maintain their numbers. It follows, then, that we don't need any more children. Monogamy is therefore no longer necessary, because if we don't need any more kids, we don't need any more parents to pair off and take care of them.
I think something like a species instinct is being reflected in our popular culture and media. We don't need to reproduce anymore, hence we don't need parents to look after these unneeded children, hence we no longer need monogamy. Perhaps somewhere, deep down, we are aware of this, and this is why contemporary television shows, magazine articles, etc, are less like 'leave it to beaver' or 'father knows best' and more like 'friends' or 'will and grace', in which heterosexual, parental monogamy is hardly celebrated. And this is fine, because frankly, it no longer needs to be.
The two things I like best about kerry are 1) that he's a lot more liberal than he's making himself out to be on this campaign, where he has to appeal to ma and pa on the farm in missouri, and 2) that he changes his mind a lot -- he sees the world as a complicated place. Circumstances change -- the conservative mindset envisions that they don't, that we can go about our business the same way we did yesterday, and this is is unrealistic.
I'm voting for kerry tomorrow (not that it matters, here in Maryland). I'd rather have him in office than bush, whom I see as too black-or-white and absolutist in his mindset -- his world view is too simplified. However, I don't think that bush would be a disaster; he won't go around exterminating the homeless or anything like that. I just think kerry would do a better job, so I'm voting for him.
Or maybe I'll write in 'hulk hogan.' seriously, if it doesn't matter in Maryland because the democrats have the electoral vote so firmly locked down, why not 'send a message' with a vote for a third party candidate? This is what the detestable roger moore recommended: in 'battleground states' vote for kerry (or bush). In 'foregone conclusion states' (like Maryland), go ahead and vote for a third party candidate to 'send a message.' of course, if enough people take this advice, it may flip-flop a state like Maryland's electoral vote. But of course, this won't happen.
Really, this is stupid. Go eat a sandwich or something, and stop being all loud and ugly. I feel embarrassed for getting as excited about it as I have.
There's a chance bush will win the election. This, in itself, may or may not be a bad thing. What will most certainly be a bad thing will be listening to the lamentations of the bush-haters, whom I find to be at least as annoying as I find bush objectionable. If bush wins, I'm going to have to listen to a lot of crap -- a lot of 'i can't believe bush won...i can't believe this country actually elected him...i don't know how I can go on being an american' etc. If kerry wins, I don't see the bush supporters (kerry haters?) being quite as vocal. So, it's time I dragged out biff and spliff, just to prepare myself for the barrage of babbling that I'll have to endure if bush wins the election, which he very well might.
Biff: bush won. I just can't believe it.
Spliff: yeah, he did. So?
Biff (sputtering): so..this represents...of the corporate..passing through congress..in iraq..from the poor..health care..of this country..represents..corporate..healthcare...united nations...
Spliff: I'll put it another way. How will bush in office effect you?
Biff: ::explodes::
That wasn't a very good biff/spliff dialog, because I'm having trouble coming up with what biff, the bush-hater, will say. But I'm sure whatever biff says will make lots of sense to biff at the time, and be hard to argue against simply because it will be spouted so loudly and aggressively. To be honest, I don't have any idea of what biff will say, at least not predicted in a more coherent way than I have above. Maybe that's as coherent as it will get. But unlike biff, I don't see what's so all-fired terrible about bush in office for another four years. Somehow, life will go on.
Here is the history of human politics, wrapped into a nutshell: there's no such thing as democracy. Or communism. Or socialism. Or capitalism. Etc. These are ideologies, and have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Countries like to sell themselves with lines like 'the people's republic of china' or 'we the people of the united states of america', but since the very dawn of civilization, world politics have structured themselves as...
Essentially, all we've ever had on this planet have been various permutations of aristocracy, whether they're the founding fathers or the khmer rouge, and this is not likely to change.
Biff: are you comparing the founding fathers to the khmer rouge?
Spliff: yes.
Biff: but the founding fathers lead the way to democracy, and the khmer rouge killed millions!
Spliff: both were a small group of people who exerted their will on a larger group.
Biff: oh.
Voting for john kerry or for george bush will do nothing to upset this one true model of human politics, 'politics' being defined as 'the way leaders manage resources and people in a civilized society.' in the short run, maybe there are a few superficial differences that may even practically effect someone. Who knows? You'll get a different analysis on this from everyone. There are lower middle class republicans and filthy rich democrats. During elections, both republicans and democrats become less ideological, and try to draw in as many voters as possible by embracing the middle of the road. Bush talks about poor rural schoolchildren, and kerry talks about the war on terror. What I'm meandering towards here is that it frankly doesn't matter who wins this election. It might be sort of interesting, but really it's not that important.
Of course, maybe I'm assuming that people aren't already fully aware of this while in fact they are. They might realize that we're going to move from one small group of wealthy white people lording over millions of others to another group of the same. They might also realize that the differences from group to group are really pretty superficial, and that one policy change pushed through congress really won't make that big an impact on their lives. Fine. But then why are you getting so excited about it?
I'm forced to the conclusion that there's just not that much to get excited about these days, so people are forced to go ballistic over presidential elections, being cut off in traffic on their way to work, spilling the orange juice on the kitchen floor, etc. I hate to get into 'humans are designed to' yet again, but bear with me just this once more. Humans are designed for flight or fight. They're designed for a hand-to-mouth existence, trekking across the serengeti and fighting off marauding wooly mammoths (or something like that). In the absence of these real threats and demands of existence, our brains seek out things to focus our fight-or-flight mechanisms on, and eventually find presidential elections, among other things.
Vote for whomever you want! I don't care -- it's not going to change the world.