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Oh, to Be a Low-Knowledge Voter!
For the first time that I can remember, I wish that I were ignorant of politics. To want to be ignorant about anything is so contrary to my nature. Although I know that I can’t undo what I know, I can’t help contemplating what life would be like if I didn’t know the disruption that was happening in the election process . . .
I could focus on getting my ingredients together for Thanksgiving. I make my own cranberry sauce with cranberries, sugar, dried cherries, and a bit of fresh orange juice; I love to watch the mixture bubbling and rollicking in the pan. And savoring it with the juicy turkey.
Or I could imagine the smells of my mother’s stuffing recipe made of matzah and other goodies, scents that fill the house with memories and joy.
Or I could think about the few lovely people I will see on Thanksgiving Day, whom I haven’t seen in many months. We’ll be catching up on smiles and stories and reminiscing about times past.
Or I could think about my beautiful orchids that are starting to bloom a whole new batch of flowers, swirling their colors around our lanai, a reminder that winter, even in Florida, is just around the corner.
Or I could look forward to our decorating our entire street with Christmas lights, standing wood ornaments, light post ornaments, and strings of lights on trees. It’s a time of man-bonding and woman supervision.
Or I could think about Hanukkah which is coming soon and our life-sized menorah that will be out early this year for the start of the holiday, for the commemoration of heroes, resilience, persistence, and miracles.
Or I could appreciate how fortunate we have been to remain healthy through these challenging times.
And then I am compelled to realize that I can’t unlearn my understanding of the difficult times we live in. I am a resolute lifelong student, not just of political stories but of life itself. I can’t stop myself from continually trying to be aware and engaged. I can’t imagine avoiding the painful stories, any more than I can ignore the smiles on children’s faces as they anticipate the holiday season.
Life demands of me that I watch and listen and learn, and embrace all of it, the joy of friendships and the holidays and the stories as they unfold.
I believe all of us are called to find a way to hold all of it, the tragic and the beautiful, the disappointments and the rewards.
We can do it. I trust myself. I trust you.
Published in Culture
California is notorious for paying bounties for all sorts of things – ADA compliance “violations”, Prop 65 labeling “violations”, you name it. There is a vigorous industry in the state of people who have built entire careers out of “finding” violations and collecting the bounties. And of course they pay their legislators well to keep this perk going.
But this is beyond politics, and was something California could have tried to fix before the Republicans were routed from statewide office – the Republicans chose not to do so, even though this bounty issue has been on the books for decades, and the corruption it engenders has been known for decades (though it has notably gotten far far worse in the last 10 years). Only concerted statewide outrage has snowball’s chance in hell of fixing it because the corruption here runs in both parties, and from top to bottom. It’s ultimately not a political problem, it’s a societal one for the state.
Bad incentives create bad outcomes, but once people are invested in milking those outcomes it is extremely difficult to fix.
For an extreme example of horrific incentives at work when it comes to bounties, see here:
https://ricochet.com/623192/archives/twitter-baskets-of-hands-and-the-incentive-problem/
Well, you are in the worst possible state for politics, @annefy. At least our Governor hasn’t lost his mind–yet. I expect things might worsen here. I’m not sure that I will “ignore” politics, but I’m exploring the level of engagement I want to maintain, intellectually and in my actions. I think I want to pull back some, but I’m not sure what that means. Just mulling along . . .
How about “high misinformation” thanks to the horrible MSM?
I have been a political junkie since my senior year in high school, when Ronald Reagan was running for reelection in 1984. I enjoyed watching Reagan’s 49 state victory against Walter Mondale. That 1984 election probably made me misunderstand how often the better candidate wins elections. I might have come away with the idea that if one has the right ideas and one communicates those ideas to the public, you will win.
But in 1986 the Democrats routed Republicans in the US Senate races, taking the majority of the US Senate. I celebrated George HW Bush’s 1988 40 state victory over Michael Dukakis. But was dismayed when Bush raised taxes, breaking his promise not to do so, and then losing to Bill Clinton in 1992.
I was thrilled by the 1994 Newt Gingrich led victories in the US Senate and US House. But I think I was misled by this too. It made me think that a majority of Americans held the political views that I held or that my conservative views were certain to be the law of the land, perhaps at least tolerated by a majority of voters.
But over the next few decades I began to realize that my views are not the view of the majority of Americans. I oppose the minimum wage, based on reading Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. They described how damaging those laws are to teenagers and low skill workers. Yet in Florida just a few weeks ago, the voters passed a 15 dollar per hour minimum wage.
I am used to this now. I realize that sometimes “my side” wins. But I also know that “my side” loses.
Not only that, I have found that my life has often become better, my life happier, regardless of whether the President has a D or and R next to their name.
This doesn’t mean that I have changed my mind about the harms of socialism or the dangers of a US Supreme Court that believes in a “living Constitution.” But I think I am much more relaxed about politics than I was in the 1990s, when I would volunteer to knock on doors for Republican candidates and collect signatures for conservative referendums.
I’m old. So, I just try to take the political ups and downs in stride.
That seems to suggest that your improving situation was thanks to yourself, not really the politics. And it suggests that you individually were able to overcome much if not all of the impositions of the left. But other people are not so fortunate, including those who don’t get a job because they aren’t (yet) worth $15/hour.
Speaking of which, would you have gotten your first job, if they had to pay you $15/hour for it? Something to think about.
I don’t remember the exact wage of my first official job (fast food in a college town,) but I’m pretty sure it paid $15/hr in 2020 dollars even by the official inflation numbers. By more realistic inflation figures, it was definitely more than today’s $15/hr.
Yes. When I was a teenager the minimum wage was somewhere between 3 dollars and 4 dollars per hour. As an unskilled 17 year old, I was able to obtain jobs. But raising the minimum wage doesn’t magically make money fall from trees nor does it make business’ labor budgets more capacious.
The minimum wage is pretty stupid when you think about it for more than a few minutes. But it’s enormously popular with voters. That’s sort of my point. One can’t expect that voters will always make the correct choice.
Yep. Something to think about. I wish more people did.
My point was more along the lines that while leftist claptrap may not have hurt YOU all that much, over the years, it still has hurt and continues to hurt a lot of other people. So it’s still something to be concerned about.
Yes. It is still something to be concerned about. Politics is important.
But I don’t get to decide what other people think or how they vote. I’m just a middle-class guy who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.
I will not carry the weight of the world on my shoulders.
Also, I do not have a crystal ball. I can’t tell you what the world will look like 4 years from now and I am skeptical of those who say that they “know.”
It’s one thing to be concerned about something, and another to formulate some way to do something about it, and still another to implement that solution.
Some have the talents for that, some don’t. I have a relative who is in his state’s legislature – he has the talent and drive for at least attempting to do something, and for knowing how his state’s politics work. Good for him. I don’t have that talent, I certainly don’t have the drive, and in terms of having a plan? Well, that’s out of my wheelhouse there too.
And as for being concerned? I’ve seen and had hurled my way in far too many iterations on the “concerned” spectrum to give that any weight. It is an all too familiar barb to chuck at someone that because they don’t agree with you on either your direction or degree of concern for X, it must be because they’re not affected by X – it’s little more than an accusation of aloofness, naiveté, or (in its worst form) snobbery. We get that one thrown at us all the time by the Left – You’re not on welfare, so how can you possibly show correct concern for those on welfare when you advocate for welfare reform. You’re not a disabled transsexual ex-nun with a split personality, so you obviously cannot show proper concern for disabled transsexual ex-nuns with split personalities and hare-lips…. Not only does this deny the capacity for empathy in the accused, it denies their ability to see things objectively.
To go back to the minimum wage issue – concern has limited utility. What can you do to persuade people that the minimum wage is a stupid and destructive practice? Because that’s the ultimate question here. If you don’t know how to convince enough people to vote against it, then it’s never going away. It’s a dumb issue, but merely be concerned about it, if you cannot affect it, isn’t going to achieve much.
This sounds more like you’re tired of watching the Washington Generals play the Harlem Globetrotters. That’s more the analogy I’d use.
No, not exactly. That’s just saying the game is rigged. And it is, of course, but the Globetrotters games are exhibition games.
What I’m suggesting is really more akin to saying that the game you thing you’re watching is nothing more than the shadow of a real but very different game, where we all like to think we’re spectators, or maybe even participants, but really we’re the game pieces being moved around.
Part of the key is to vote for people who are at least nominally against what you see as causing problems, rather than vote for the other side because maybe they promise (usually meaning lie) to make YOUR life easier, or because the media tells you they’re better people, etc.
I am a straight ticket Republican voter. The only time I voted for a Democrat was when I was 18, in 1984, and my father told me that the Republican candidate for California state senate was “an extremist.” It turns out that this Republican candidate for state senate was a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. I should not have listened to my father, but I did, mistakenly. Then in 1990 when my Republican congressman voted with George HW Bush to raise taxes, I voted Libertarian in protest. I sometimes wonder if that was a bad vote because this Republican congressman was still better than the Democrat opponent. In both cases the Republican candidate won without my vote.
In any case, I am a pretty died in the wool Republican voter.
You mean I’m not a game piece paying out of his pocket to eagerly watch a sham?
I hope you share your beer and wine with her. She is doing Yeoman’s (is there a Yeowoman?) work.
I think the fundamental problem is that we need a new media.
Trump can do that. Trump TV.
She’s mainly a white wine drinker and does her share in that respect. I let her taste my IPAs, but then she makes faces.
I want my…
I want my…
I want my Trump TV!!!!
That would be great, wouldn’t it?
It would only end up the same as the media we have, then we’d be looking for yet another “new” one.
I rarely find this turning out well. When neither side is really doing what I agree with, whom to choose between? And as for voting strictly defensively, isn’t that just a hostage crisis or a protection racket?
Vote for me because the other guy wants to kill you.
I know he does, but you want me to vote for you out of fear of him. What in hell are you doing?
Not killing you.
Are you going to do anything I want you to do? Are you actually representing me?
Honestly? No. But I’ll promise to do things you like, and to not kill you. I just need your vote, and I’ll win it by showing you how the other guy really really wants to kill you. I find you more valuable alive. Easier to milk.
That’s just exploitation.
Dairy cows the world over aren’t complaining.
They do when they figure out what happens when they stop producing milk.
Look, the other guy wants to make veal of you now. I’ll let you live.
So you can make a fillet of me later? Have you considered veganism? What if I choose neither?
*sounds of knives sharpening*…
That’s by Huey Lewis And The News, right?
Newsmax.
I don’t think it’s quite that bad. A better equivalence is when the Dims demand “compromise,” to them that’s like when someone breaks into your house and threatens to kill you and your wife and children. The Democrat “compromise” would be something like you live, but they kill your wife and half your children. The Republican solution is that the criminal should still be in prison from the last time, etc. It’s not like they say it’s okay if only half your children are killed but not your wife. Or that they’ll just put it all of ’til later. That’s the “debate” going on among the Dims: all now, or half now and the other half later?
But you have some people in Georgia saying that people should refuse to support the GOP candidates for US Senate in order to protest the fact that Trump had the election stolen from him.
How does that fit into all this? Hand over the Senate to Chuck Schumer as a way of protesting the fact that Biden stole the election from Trump. Wow.
Huey Lewis And The Newsmax! Brilliant!
Too often the Republican will say that the prisoner should have still been in prison, but will have done nothing substantive about it except vote for more prisons for the prison lobby, and they don’t see a legal reason at the moment that would stop the murderer because of … technical reasons that need to be adjudicated in court first… Oh, and have you made your monthly donation yet? Oh, wait, they finished? Well, come on Fox News and share your pain and that healthy healthy outrage – our next election cycle needs a new moral panic and you’re now the perfect mascot!
There’s….. got to be a logic in there…. somewhere?
It sounds like the NeverTrumps, except their thing was to vote out Republican Senators to punish them for supporting Trump. You know, like not voting to remove him from office, etc.