Thursday, October 11, 2012

THE VP DEBATE

This is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a friend this morning :

 The VP debates are tonight.  I don’t know if I will watch.  The debates leave me in such an aggravated state I don’t think if it is worth the annoyance. Any way, over the next week, which ever side is down will try to spin it.  I can’t believe that this late in the election season people will switch their vote on the basis of debate charisma.    

What can we do (other than cast our vote) – we are really powerless on the outcome.   One person one vote really doesn't elect, because the way the system is set up a President can win the popular vote and lose the election…The founding fathers ( I hate that phrase) felt that the average man was not knowledgeable enough to be trusted to vote  his own best interest so they came up with the electoral  college – they have been proven right on the first assumption, but the manipulated system of the electoral college is little better.   

Humans are pack animals, or cult animals, or mob animals – which ever you prefer…we need to belong to a group…we need to identify with a group…and groups can be manipulated by charismatic alpha males.  It doesn't matter if the group is a clan, a religion, a race, a party, a state or a nation.    The greater good usually turns out to be the grater bad for some sub section – minority without power.   Group power throughout history has always been destructive to the human race in general – wars, genocide, suppression, the inquisition: all manners of atrocities against our own kind are committed by people in power manipulating their group.  These people who manipulate are themselves part of a group - and their agenda is personal power and wealth.  This election is a macrocosm of that premise.   

There is no answer; there are too many people in the world to be able to live an independent libertarian life; and the need for group identity often trumps our best interest.     It is not our nature to be concerned beyond our own group and never will be – we are the base human animal: we will interact only with the group of our identity, and we can not change.  

With the world population doubling every forty years we are bound to come into more and more conflict for energy, food, and land space.  The idea that our group might cooperate with all other people in the world – other groups, for the greater good of humanity is a pipe dream.   Not a great proposition to look forward to (never end a sentence with a preposition – fuck it, rules (like spelling) are meant to be bent as long as the understanding is clear.)  

I want to belong to the group that looks out for me - but at what cost?  

the Ol'Buzzard 


4 comments:

  1. Agree totally with your thesis.

    And relax "never end a sentence with a preposition" has no basis in fact. It was unilaterally added to English grammar centuries ago by someone who decided it should be there. Ignore it. It is NOT a real grammar rule regardless of what your text book said.

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  2. I lived in the US for about 34 years after spending a large part of the first 30+ in Canada and never could understand the system as it was arranged. There are no perfect governments but it's certainly true that a parliamentary format has a slightly better chance of representing the different aspirations of the population. One of the best parts is that the party leaders actually have to be able to reason and speak extemporaneously. The American political system has more in common with a dictatorship than a true democracy (or republic).

    As for what you say about overpopulation and the coming resource wars, I couldn't agree more.

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  3. I want to run for President..I would take no money from anyone and would speak the truth so loudly they would run and hide.

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  4. Can't solve helplessness and hopelessness, but I do hereby give you all the permission in the world to use a preposition to end a sentence with. Better?

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COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."