House of Eratosthenes

What’s Wrong With the World?
:
…“comfort” has evolved to a state of being like some model…not achieving something, but resembling something. Being, not doing. Because if people accept you as a peer, you won’t be left to starve no matter what — but if they don’t, then who knows? More guarantees in life are always good. And so we try to be like everybody else.
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You’re hired into a job, you are hired to be and not to do. If you’re fired, you’re fired for your failure to be and not to do. If not — when you get another executive in charge of the company, if you open your company’s web site and read his biography, you’ll probably read a great deal about what he is…not so much anymore about what he has done.

What did I say…

The Fourth Most Important Issue
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Is this thing called “identity politics” not just the biggest old bucket o’ crap to hang around humanity’s neck since the constitutional republic was invented?
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Is it possible to represent someone in a high political office, such as President of the United States, who is not part of your personal demographic group? Or is a woman guaranteed superior representation from someone else who is a woman, compared to what she’d ever get from a man?

I personally favor the first of those two options. I know if Condoleeza Rice was running, as a straight white man who is a parent and has been married before, I’d put her ahead of a lot of married-and-divorced straight white fathers who are in the race now. I’d vote for her over Giulliani, McCain, definitely over that crackpot Ron Paul. She’d come in behind Thompson, because Thompson has actually been consistent and stalwart on things that I think are important. I’d put her on par with Romney, I think. Maybe a little bit ahead of Mitt.

That’s the fourth most important issue right there: Is this something I’m not supposed to be doing? I just stacked Condi in behind Fred but ahead of Mitt and Rudy and John and Ron. White guy, black girl, white guy white guy white guy. Hey, I’m a white guy and I put a black lady in as #2. Is there a “Stick To Your Own Kind” police coming over to put me under arrest now? Or am I simply betraying my own interests, with my readiness to vote for someone who’s a woman when I’m not one myself?

And what do we have going on href=”http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004125568_camplatin15.html”>here:

As both candidates aggressively court Hispanic voters, Obama confronts a history of often uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Hispanics, particularly as they have jockeyed for influence in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

“Many Latinos are not ready for a person of color,” Natasha Carrillo, 20, of East Los Angeles, said. “I don’t think many Latinos will vote for Obama. There’s always been tension in the black and Latino communities. There’s still that strong ethnic division. I helped organize citizenship drives, and those who I’ve talked to support Clinton.”

Being elected to be, and not so much to do.

I would imagine, since this is a year divisible by four, that over the next three months or so the li’l toe-heads in school are occasionally going to be called on to inspect this thing called “politics.” Their teachers are going to eek out some non-committal brand of babbling calculated not so much to elucidate, but to give the feeling that something of substance was handed out without ticking off their bosses, parents of all political flavorings, and most importantly the teachers’ union.

They will dish out, faithfully, the seven lies I was told years ago when I was captive to these “teachings”. Namely, that Republicans and democrats want to do the same things but have different ways of going about doing ’em.

They’re going to present the political process as a process in which we identify common problems, and get together to solve them.

And here we are.

Arguing between elections about who could fix things if only they had the power, and who’s gumming up the works because they have too much — and when the elections come it’s all different. We use the electoral process to figure out which demographic group outnumbers which other demographic group.

Whose turn is it to have a representative in the White House? Women? Or Blacks? Are there enough Hispanics to hand the election over to the woman?

Is anybody talking anywhere about what the respective candidates would do about the various issues?

It seems those days are long gone.

My radio guys had a “senior analyst” on the other morning. And they decided to insist on some major policy difference between Clinton and Obama. Where, exactly, do they disagree?

Talk about awk-ward. The poor guy hemmed and hawed and eventually squeaked out something about…erm…Venezuela.

I have to admit, it is kind of exciting living in a time in which, in my youth, it was a contest among white-guys-only, and now it’s not. But the thing that makes it exciting is the stuff I have the opportunity to learn. And what I’ve learned is something maybe I shouldn’t be mentioning in a blog, and it’s certainly something I can’t say out loud in public.

I’ve learned that these problems we’re trying to solve, get considerably less attention now than they did when it was a contest-among-white-guys.

No, not for the reasons you might think I’d say that, since I’m a white guy. For entirely different reasons. Simply put, if you think this is progress — you’re nuts. We’re going through the motions of arguing about issues, and we’re doing anything-but. We’re having a contest to see which human class has the most noses. We’re trying to figure out which race has done the best job of breeding.

You know, maybe with another century or so it’s going to be natural for this stuff to gradually dissipate. Eventually, we’ll achieve the wonderful society we envision…an election comes up and it’s Blacks against Hispanics against white guys against women, and we get back the pressure on the candidates we used to have, to form sensible policy alternatives on the issues that confront the nation. Maybe in 100 years, maybe a little more.

But the problem is, in the course of all those generations people die off while waiting. And that strikes me as a little silly, when I consider — if we put some thought into why some policies are good and some policies are bad, and were somewhat more interested in what our elected officials do than in what those elected officials are — it wouldn’t take nearly that long. It’d be fairly instant wouldn’t it?

It also occurs to me that when people talk about the amounts of money raised by these candidates, the numbers they throw around are fairly large, in the millions of dollars. That means jobs. Big, beefy, mature industries, headed up by smart, slick experts. Which means a lot of people who have something to lose if we talk about issues and policies, and a whole lot to gain if we remain distracted by what personal attributes the candidates have.

I’m a realist. I understand in the first election in which a woman and a person of color have come so far, a little distraction is normal. But at some point it gets to be a little too much, doesn’t it? All this activity and all this time, in all these states, with little or no discussion about policy differentials?

And this is supposed to be our remedy for the “disastrous” policies of an incumbent President, who’s “messing everything up.”

This looks to me a lot more like a prologue to messing things up.

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Being, Not DoingWednesday, February 6th, 2008

Being, Not Doing
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008