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Others Drink from the Wrong Cup. And We Gag.
I have three little girls, who are in college now. When they were young we rarely gave them candy or soda. Those were special treats for birthdays, or travel, or holidays, or whatever. But that was not part of their everyday diet. We weren’t fanatics about it, but we avoided junk in their diet. Nothing wrong with the occasional treat, but that wasn’t how we lived every day. And we raised three very strong, healthy kids.
We lived in the mountains of Tennessee, and often would have a fire at night, out on the deck (That’s me, on just such an evening, pictured to the right.). We’d sit around the fire, look at the views of the mountains, admire the sunset, and enjoy the cool evening mountain air. It was idyllic. I enjoy bourbon, and on those evenings I would often have a bourbon and Coke. Or three. I mix them with an emphasis on the bourbon, adding Coke mainly for color, and to avoid the appearance that I’m drinking straight bourbon. Anyway, on one of these lovely evenings, the adults were sitting around the fire, and I had a beautifully potent BOURBON and coke sitting on the ground next to my chair.
My daughters were running around, catching fireflies, chasing the dogs, playing tag, and doing the things that little kids do on beautiful summer evenings. Until my middle daughter noticed what appeared to be a Coke sitting on the ground next to my chair. “What a special treat!” she thought to herself. “He won’t notice if I just take one drink!” she thought.
So I’m listening to one of the adults tell a story, when all of a sudden I hear a little girl choking and gagging on the ground behind my lawn chair. I jump up, run around my chair, and try to help her.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“Daddy, what’s wrong with your Coke!?! Ewwww!!!!”
It took me a second, and then I realized what she had done. A good father would have been very sympathetic and gotten her something to drink to get the taste of bourbon out of her mouth. I, of course, laughed myself silly. Along with the other adults. I still chuckle, just thinking about it. Maybe you had to be there. She looked so horrified and disgusted and green around the gills. She was maybe eight years old. She was so cute.
With entertainment like that, who needs TV?
I thought of that night today for some reason, and I smiled. What a great night.
And then I thought of Americans who voted for Joe Biden.
They thought they were being rebels. Going against the grain. Sneaking around, maybe even cheating a little bit to get what they wanted, and sticking it to the man.
Now, having taken a drink from that red Solo cup sitting on the ground – now we find out how much they like it.
If we’re lucky, they’ll get sick, and gag when they realize what they’ve done. And if we’re lucky, the adults around them will laugh at them. And if we’re lucky, they’ll eventually laugh along with the adults, learn from their mistakes, and change their behavior (and their votes) in the future.
For some reason, I find all of those possibilities to be unlikely. And I suspect that the consequences of their little fit of pique are likely to be painful for everyone. I hope I’m wrong, but I see the next four years involving a lot of disgusted gagging from all of us. Not just from those who decided to drink from this cup for questionable reasons. But from the rest of us, too.
Maybe I’m wrong. Hopefully I am.
But from a society-wide standpoint, drinking from the wrong cup can be extremely unpleasant. Not just for those who snuck a drink from the wrong cup. For everyone else, too.
Those who do so hope it will be like a little kid drinking from Daddy’s cup – C’mon! It’ll be fun! Let’s stir thing up a bit! What do they know! Haha!
And honestly, when it’s just a little kid getting a snoot full of bourbon, it is sort of funny.
But this – this is not funny.
This is not funny, because I feel like my kid took a drink of something that they weren’t expecting, but I’ll be the one gagging.
This is not funny.
Published in General
If that’s a trouncing, I’d hate to witness a decimation.
Seriously, what the hell has the news been about the last month? That the election was turning on a few states’ outcomes, and tens of thousands of votes.
If that’s a trouncing, Bill, you need a dictionary, where you would turn to the page where “trounce” is located, and then read the definition. Aloud. Several times.
I like that alot thank you for your contribution. But I think it should be
Castaigne’s Razor: Sufficient evolutionary psychology and misanthropy is required for any explanation of any human institution. All explanations that lack this overestimate humanity.
About the only intellectual advantage I have on Dr. Bastiat is my misanthropy.
That’s the difference between getting stuff through the marketplace and getting stuff from government. In the marketplace, you get what you pay for and you don’t make anyone else gag. When you vote for a politician, you vote for a bundle of policies – some you like, some you don’t, and some you hate. There’s no way to get exactly what you want. The default, then, should be to provide goods and services through the market and through the government only when absolutely necessary and then only after serious discussion.
FIFY
Trump was a horrible candidate who barely beat Hillary. We haven’t had a good collection of malignant Narcissists for years.
Malignant Narcissists? I heard them open for the Stones.
So are voters really that dumb to believe that Trump is somehow responsible for Covid?
Then democracy cannot work.
Speaking of fits of pique, it seems some on the red side of the Great Divide are having a go at their own fit by encouraging Georgia voters to eschew voting for the Republican candidates in the runoff election. That is a stupendously juvenile sipping from the wrong cup. If these idiots snatch away the upside of the November election, I’ll be gagging for quite a while.
Yes. Yes they are. After all, it’s been repeated by the media and Democrats (I repeat) ad nauseum. It must be true!
Democracies are always a disaster. That’s why the founders set this up as a republic, not a democracy.
That, and as Chesterton notes, there’s distributed wisdom among the voting populace. And as I note, until there isn’t. The turning away from God (through the radical secularization infecting our institutions — even our churches!) has left us a nation of fools. Any people that would put Joe Biden and Kamala Harris behind the levers of government. . .
No. But some voters apply the ancient rule: a captain is responsible for any failing of the ship or the crew.
I believe Trump has handled things fairly well. I’m not arrogant enough to think I would have made better decisions. Best left to the Dunning-Kruger types in politics, the media and entertainment.
It’s not necessarily a given that the Georgia runoffs will be conducted honestly. If they get 95% or whatever Republican turnout again, and still swing it to the Dems, that gives them a cover of legitimacy that they don’t deserve.
We don’t live in one, so that’s good news.
Vote fraud is always a possibility. I believe it happens on a small scale every election. With feelings running high and polls so tight we can hardly breathe, the incentive to cheat is a real factor on both sides. But that’s no reason to help the Dems flip the Senate. If that happens I will be seriously chapped at that faction of the party. (Note that Trump’s forces are campaigning in Georgia, so he and they can’t be part of this confederacy of dunces.)
That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that by campaigning etc, and maybe turning out 95% of the vote again, if the Dems steal it anyway they’ll have given the result a veneer of respectability that it doesn’t merit.
So Georgians should stay home and cede the Senate to Schumer et al.? No thanks. That’s madness.
They can try. But if they fail – perhaps due to cheating – they will have given Schumer an appearance of “mandate” that is undeserved.
I know the instinct is that voting is never wasted, or even a bad idea. But that’s naive. One example I had to explain to people over and over in Phoenix, was with the HOA. If there were, say, 100 units, and one side had 30 or even 40 people who would vote their way, that wasn’t enough to win on their own because it wouldn’t be a “quorum.” UNLESS the people with 20 votes on their side figured they HAVE TO VOTE! DON’T CEDE! (Maybe they even thought they could somehow win…) But actually their 20 votes plus the 30 (or 40) makes a “quorum” and then the 30 (or 40) votes win.
I don’t disagree, but, in reality, how big is that faction? Lin Wood? I’m hoping that whoever is arguing this is so transparently dumb that the idea doesn’t get traction, while bucks are spent urging just the opposite.
And if the Democrats win because the Republicans stay home and don’t even try, Schumer still has an appearance of a mandate, because: Hey, look! We won; we have a mandate. Even the Republicans didn’t care to vote for their own candidates.
Do you think that’s equivalent to maybe 95% turnout but the Dims still “win” due to cheating?