Rant # 1: Saving America From Itself
We can't keep doing what we've been doing.
Like using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
What on Earth is going on in America right now?
An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot.
T.E. Lawrence
We’ve put criminals in office; we’ve even reelected them after their convictions. But the spin The Party (Democrat, Republican, “Independent,” all the rest in one lump) put on them belies the very idea of “leadership” and has turned our government into a kleptocracy maintained by a mass media machine bought and paid for by The Party. A sitting governor said the quiet part out loud recently, pleading for wealthy taxpayers to move back to her state and do their “patriotic duty” and pay her usurious taxes to cover her social welfare programs, including paying rent for illegal aliens. The bitter part of that story will be that the voters will comfortably reelect her in November not because she’s clearly a grifter or because they feel she’s acting in the best interests of her state, but because of the party box on the ballots.
And no one really cares.
It’s The Party that’s destroyed our political system—the one Washington warned us about—and will destroy the country. These grifters in suits screech they are trying to preserve the system through the SAVE America Act that will quietly die in Congress. Why? Because The Party can’t stand the idea that they can’t manipulate the voter rolls to make sure their grifters get in office. Even if, by some miracle, it gets signed into law, a federal judge will read his script and declare it unconstitutional, and then another will, and another, until the leadership changes in Washington and they stop pressing the issue. Oh, yes, judges have scripts, too, because they aspire to higher office like the other grifters in public office. Remember that The Party got them there, and they expect to rise in the system through the same means.
The electorate might want fair elections, but they don’t vote for them.
Voters forget stuff; they don’t know stuff; they believe in stuff that isn’t true; they like stuff that isn’t good for them, and they vote according to their scripts, mostly by checking their wing of The Party’s letter, especially in the pocket boroughs; you know, the guaranteed districts for the last part of The Party that drew the congressional district map.
Yes, The Party box is evil, but it will always be there because The Party runs the elections, says who’s on the ballots, what those ballots look like, and even how they’re counted. Electronic voting? Do you think anyone will count those votes fairly? Oops! Sorry; that bunch just disappeared! Can’t understand it; can’t recover them either; sorry! Do you think anyone really polices the voter rolls at all? Have your keeper adjust your meds if you think hundreds of voters live in that abandoned strip mall. Infinite ballot counts that find enough “mail-in” and “early” ballots with identical postmarks to make the distant third-place candidate leap safely into second place overnight? Perfectly credible only to the naïve and The Party.
It matters not who casts the ballots. What matters is who counts the ballots.
Joseph Stalin
The Party has to keep itself in charge.
And they will for the foreseeable future because we’re too lazy to kick them out. The hard work of looking at the voter roles, of unifying the crazy-quilt of registration and residency laws…you know, to make sure they’re not manipulated by the local kleptocrats. We can do it; we just don’t have the spine to do it, to fight The Party’s incredibly long reach. We’d rather let them just do what they want and act like it’s all in our/their best interests because of that letter after their name and, well, it’s easier than the alternative.
Take the (election) money out.
As I’ve advocated for decades:
Take those letters off the ballot.
Vote only for chief executives: presidents, governors, and mayors.
End the pseudo-elections for representatives at all levels, eliminate all the districts, and draft those who represent us by lot from telephone company and utility billing records for a single term.
Make the sheriffs, judges, district attorneys, clerks, and all others civil service jobs.
But, as we all know, that won’t happen because The Party won’t allow it and their media slaves live off the gravy train.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies of all good government…Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there not one vice you do not possess?...Gold is your God…Religion? My horse knows more of religion…Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You [who] were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed are yourselves become the greatest grievance…Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves, be gone!...In the name of God, go!
Oliver Cromwell to Parliament, 20 Apr 1653
Do we need another civil war to get rid of these grifters who take our money and leave us in the ashes of our failed cities?
Crop Duster: A Novel of WWII
I don’t write about politics a lot—too divisive—but California drove me to do this. Crop Duster is tangentially about the fallout from a certain German election in 1933.
And Finally...
On 13 June:
323 BC: The latest accepted date for the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon; it may have been as early as 10 June. His cause of death is also unclear (may have been malaria, typhoid, poisoning, or a host of other things), as is his current burial place, as his tomb in Alexandria, Egypt, vanished in the 4th Century AD.
1920: US Post Office prohibits mailing children. After introducing Parcel Post in 1913, a few US parents technically “mailed” their children (accompanied by postal workers) to relatives to save on train fare. After several instances garnered media attention, the Post Office banned the practice.
And today is WORLD SOFTBALL DAY, in part commemorating this day in 1991, when the International Olympic Committee added women’s softball and men’s baseball to the Summer Games in 1992. Organizers dropped both softball and baseball in 2020 because of low interest, but they will make a comeback in 2026. Make up your minds, people.