Don't Sell Your Soul

I tried to ignore this story about a guy complaining about his father who is a "right wing a-hole." Depending upon the day and my mood, I can fit or be made to fit into this pigeonhole. And when I have participated in such conversations, it's generally been unpleasant.

But then I heard just enough of Andrew W. K.'s reply that I realized he was making a point closely related to one that I had made a while back. So, if he's agreeing with me, he must be right. Right? I had noted that when interacting with someone who is selling something, their humanity becomes eclipsed by their sales pitch. And if the product is the Republican/Democrat party, the sales pitch is political propaganda. Talk to a spokesman/activist and you can find yourself conversing with someone who is indistinguishable from a spambot.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Social Justice Warrior, you just failed my anti-Turing test."

What Andrew W. K. said that snagged my attention was this sentence: "Try to find a single instance where you referred to your dad as a human being, a person, or a man." Maybe the dad was so monomaniacal in his right-wing advocacy that it eclipsed his humanity. That's a real risk. OR maybe the "Son of a Right Winger" was so monomaniacal in his left-wing beliefs that it blinded him.

I have to acknowledge the humanity of humans who are anti-Turing test failures.

This turned my notion of an anti-Turing test inside out. Or it provided a hint at what an anti-Turing test should look for. Humans can recognize other humans. And should recognize other humans. Seriously bad things happen when people ignore/deny the humanity of the other. Prior to the Civil War Huck Finn might say, "Nobody got killed except some n-----s." Hutus deny the humanity of Tutsis. Turks deny the humanity of Armenians. Nazis deny the humanity of Jews. (Yes, I've Godwinned this note. Deal with it.)

If you can't/won't see the humanity of the other, your own humanity is jeopardized.

Perhaps this is what older generations meant by "selling one's soul." 

Democrats turned the funeral of Senator Paul Wellstone into a political pep-rally. They got spanked by the electorate because of its obvious ghoulishness. But the ghoulishness wasn't obvious to them because the humanity of everyone involved had been sacrificed on the altar of partisan interests. The same lack of perspective is on display when a "Pro-Lifer" murders an abortionist.

When you read classics, the ancients' axe-grinding occasions only a quizzical "what?" But we read classics because the ancients did more than just grind axes: they shared some truth about humanity they understood. Propaganda has a limited shelf-life after which it becomes--at best--a joke, then irrelevant.

One must retain one's soul in order to create art. Art manifests something transcendent and it flees pornography. This makes some think that Liberalism is killing art when it asserts that Art is always political. Political totalitarianism is a blight on our culture.

If you deny the assertion that Art must put the correct political message first, you'll be called an International Lord or Hate, a cismale gendernormative fascist, or something as bad. Of course, I'd rather be called that then sell my soul to The Cause--any cause.

Lighten Up, Francis

It was a Friday night and I saw a lame joke on Facebook that had been posted by one of my more Conservative friends.

I reposted the joke, because it struck me funny. And it was late.

Moments later I got an abusive response from someone I used to know.

It's a joke. The reason why the joke works is that the race card has been overplayed for the last 5 years.

Any time anybody has said anything critical of that half-white fellow who lives in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue, or noted the similarity of the US economic performance to that during the decades of FDR's administration, the response has been a charge of racism.

I do my best to be indifferent to politics. The only politicians worse than Democrats are Republicans. I want a government that I can safely ignore.

Yet the above pattern of rhetoric ires me because it is like the little boy who cried wolf. Think of it like quantitative easing. The coin of moral outrage is debased by overuse.

Getting angry about that debasement won't do anybody any good, so I choose to respond with humor.

After the abusive response, I replied "Lighten up, Francis."

This produced even more abuse. I realized the fun-loving person I had known and laughed with decades ago had been replaced with a humorless scold who thinks "shut up" is persuasive argument.

Maybe some invasion of the body snatchers scenario was responsible for draining away this person's humanity. More likely something else. All I know is that this was not the person who I used to know.

I had not realized it at the time, but I was administering an anti-Turing test.

Traffic Analysis

I once worked for NSA. At that time it was unlawful for me to say what NSA did, except to say that we made codes to prevent other countries from reading our communications. The rest of what NSA did was an pretty-easily-guessed secret. My job title was cryptologic mathematician.

During WW2, if Hitler turned on a radio, and sent a message to Rommel, it might be that the predecessor of the UK's GCHQ had an antenna and a receiver that picked up the transmission. The Brits had a lot of people employed at places like Bletchley Park. And a lot of other places to do science on that sort of thing.

Imagine you have an enemy who uses the radio and you have smart guys who want to wring as much information out of the enemy's communications as possible. The really juicy stuff is encrypted, so you don't know what exactly they're saying. But you do know that Hitler talks to Rommel, and Rommel talks to Fritz and Fritz talks to Brunhilde. Studying these patterns is called traffic analysis. It's the best you can do if you can't get hold of the internals of messages.

By doing traffic analysis, we may not know what is said, but we know who is talking and when. For instance, suppose you want the Nazis to think George Patton is going to cross the English Channel at Calais. You might put up a bunch of inflatable tanks and planes on the coast, but the Nazis won't fall for it unless you've actually got "ole blood 'n' guts" talking on the radio and lots of radio replies between those rubber tanks and planes. This was one of the reasons why Hitler could not believe that D-Day was going to be at Normandy. His technical boffins told him where Patton was and how much Army he had around him.

The US is smarter than that. We get eye-witness accounts of one of the 9-11 terrorists being in Prague and the 9-11 Commission denies them because we know his cell phone (that won't work in Europe) is in the US. Nobody would ever think to lend his cell phone to a friend while he's travelling.

I figure all of the Al Qaeda operatives are dead who haven't already figured out how traffic analysis works. There's a sort of Darwinian selection process that winnows out those terrorists who don't luck into effective NSA-evading strategies.

Here's another application of traffic analysis that you might be a little familiar with. Your wife asks you some difficult, pointed questions about an unfamiliar number that keeps showing up on your cell phone bills. 

Maybe you escape those difficult questions because the phone number doesn't show the name "Bubbles Mattressthrasher." Your adulterous communications are a little bit easier to hide because your wife can only see one piece of the puzzle. She can't see Bubbles' cell phone bill, and infer from her communications with furriers and jewelers that certain charges on your credit card can be explained thereby.

If you have the morality of a politician, you're grateful spouses can't do the deeper kind of traffic analysis data I just outlined.

One of the reasons why the US came into WW2 and threw so much effort into the European Theater (as opposed to the Pacific Theater where we'd been attacked), was the collapse of Isolationist opposition. And one of the reasons for that was the active intelligence operation conducted against US politicians by the Brits who actively set up Isolationist politicians with honey traps to blackmail them into voting favorably to the UK. Arthur Vandenberg was a Michigan Senator from my home town of Grand Rapids who mysteriously voted FOR the lend-lease bill despite his Isolationist politics.

But that's OK because they were fighting Hitler. And they were foreigners, no US bureaucrat would do anything like that.

Of course, J. Edgar Hoover managed to stay in charge of the FBI for all of his adult life despite serving Presidents all over the political spectrum who hated him. And despite concerted efforts to depose him, or retire him, he always managed to hang on. It was almost like he had some magic that he could use against his enemies.

Since 9/11 a lot of blood and treasure has gone into creating a comprehensive surveillance regime of digital communications passing through the US. It seems that our wise and benevolent leaders have access to AT THE VERY LEAST all the cell phone bills in this country. 

Despite all of this a couple foreigners managed to plot and perpetrate a bombing attack on the Boston Marathon. So, why did we spend all that money?

If it doesn't catch terrorists, what does it catch?

Put on your tin foil hat before I ask the next question: 

Have you ever noticed how politicians change after they go to Washington? I'm sure there are lots of reasons: getting the money from lobbyists for reelection campaigns comes to mind. Or playing to a National stage.

But if I were a politician with any damaging secrets that could be penetrated by traffic analysis, I'd assume they're known to persons within the NSA. 

And we can trust them like we trust the IRS with our financial data.

R100 vs R101

My work in progress is a novel, Steamship to Kashmir. It has an airship with Mycroft Holmes as a passenger.

When I conceptualized the airship, I looked at the Hindenburg for inspiration. Since I did not want to see the airship end in a fire-ball, I opted for a non-hydrogen lifting gas--steam. The US zeppelin program lasted several years longer, but the highest-profiles zeppelins operated by the US Navy were lost in storms.

Sadly, I gave short shrift to the British airship programs. This is unforgivable when researching a novel featuring a British airship. The Akron and the Macon as well as the Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg all get prominent mention in the articles I've read, but less so the R100 and R101. It's probably the flashy names.

I had heard of how the disastrous crash of the R101 on its maiden flight doomed British airship development. But I had not heard the story behind the story of the R101 disaster until I read this chestnut. It seems the R100 and the R101 were built by a company named Vickers and by the British civil service, respectively.

One of my surprises upon visiting the UK was seeing private-owned infrastructure where I didn't expect it. If you wait at a bus stop in my home town of Grand Rapids, the bus which pulls up will be owned by GRATA, an entity of the city government that loses money and is propped up by taxes. If you ride a train in the US, it is owned by AmTrak, an entity of the Federal government that loses money and is propped up by taxes.

Thus it makes sense to me that Britain would run two airship programs side-by-side in a competitive fashion. I may be mistaken, but it sounds like running two Apollo programs operated by Boeing and NASA, respectively.

The R101 is a good example of what can happen when political rather than economic or engineering considerations drive a project. The government does not want to be embarrassed and it will use whatever means necessary to avoid embarrassment and shift blame away from itself. Conversely, corporations do not want to lose money and it will use whatever means necessary to minimize loss and shift risks away from itself.

NASA was pushing for faster turn around time and more launches per year, and so they overrode the warnings and launched the Space Shuttle Challenger while icicles were hanging from it. The cold temperatures made the o-rings inflexible and the inflexible o-rings failed catastrophically. Apparently, the same kind of thinking was in play when the R101 took off for India. It got as far as France.

The R100 had already successfully flown to Canada and back. To minimize further embarrassment the UK government grounded it and broke it up for scrap.

To be fair, the state of mathematics and computations at the time made strength-of-materials calculations difficult and time consuming. Thus both ships were probably too weak to handle extreme weather and the UK government's decision to fly in deteriorating weather doomed the R101.

It is simplistic to say Capitalism good, Socialism bad. There are different relative advantages to each approach. If you want to get maximum performance for least expense, you want Capitalism. If you are willing to sacrifice these things for the good of the collective, you want Socialism. Even if the good of the collective requires grounding and breaking up the R100.

Just a few years after this the US Navy's airship  USS Akron would be lost in a storm, and a few years after that the USS Macon would be lost in another storm. Given the available materials and the inability of the engineers to accurately gauge loads, the R100 would have probably been lost in a storm--eventually.

Though the Germans-built airships Graf Zeppelin and Graf Zeppelin II were not lost to storms, they could not survive Herman Goring's order that they be dismantled. Perhaps the Germans knew a little bit more about structural engineering or meteorology than the UK and US.

Religion and Politics

OK, you can just say, "I hate Steve," now and get it over with. I have friends who have the good sense to say, "Never discuss religion or politics," and this is good advice, too. So, I'm not going to follow that good advice.

It all started when the Pope resigned and they named a replacement Pope. I'm not Catholic, so I don't have a dog in this fight. But I am a Christian, so am not completely disinterested. Whenever anything like that happens I hear stupid things said about Catholicism.

To hear some people talk about Catholics the only things Catholics do is cover-up pedophile priests, discriminate against women, and oppose birth control. Funny how a major world religion should be built upon such narrow interests.

The stupid things I hear said about Catholicism are usually in the form of questions, "Will the new Pope allow female priests (priestesses)? Will the new Pope come out in favor of gay marriage? Will the new Pope declare Zeus the king of the gods? Will the new Pope tell everyone to worship Caesar?"

I knew these were stupid things, but a caller on a radio show said something that crystallized my thinking on the subject: Politics and Religion are opposites.

The laws of a country should follow from the desires and values of that country's citizens. The will of the people can change and that changing will engages politics to change a nation's laws. Is it illegal to marry your same-sex lover? That law is a reflection of the political consensus of a nation at the point of that law being enacted. Should the political consensus change, then the law can be changed to reflect the changing consensus.

For instance, amphetamines were dispensed over-the-counter at the time that Have Spacesuit Will Travel was written. But the consensus of their legality changed by the time Breaking Bad was written. Apparently, the consensus is moving the other way with marijuana legalization.

People should be free to choose their legislators who'll enact laws that reflect the people's will. This is politics.

Religion is the opposite. Religion is what humans do about God. Jews, Christians, and Moslems teach that God dispenses moral laws. These laws reflect each religion's God-concept.

I can speak best for Christianity. Christianity teaches that God does not change. Human understanding of God may change, but the essential deity disclosed by General and Special Revelation does not change. And the essential moral character of deity does not change. What must change is me. I must accommodate my internal moral compass to what has been disclosed to me by Christianity.

There's an old joke about Moses coming down from the Mount saying, "The good news is that I got him down to Ten Commandments, but the bad news is Seven is still in there." The joke works because we all have times when we wish some part or another of the moral law weren't there. But we must accommodate ourselves to it. It does not go the other way. I cannot accommodate the moral law to my preferences.

And you cannot impose your preferences upon any religion's moral law.

I happen to think it abhorrent that people expect to be rewarded for murder with virgins in Paradise. Therefore, I don't belong to any religion that thinks so.

You may have similar notions about one thing or another that the Pope or Catholics believe. If so, you shouldn't belong to a Catholic church.

It's OK to find another church whose beliefs are not abhorrent to you, but it is not OK to try to change that church to make it after your own image. That's how people make Golden Calves.

Breakfast With Joe

I have a friend who is immensely interested in politics. He's on news haitus as a matter of mental hygiene. I've complained of the class of induhvidual who think that "shut up" is viable political rhetoric. And of the deliberately obtuse activist who misconstrues to misinform 3rd parties watching the exchange. But today my friend, Joe, reminded me of a more toxic pattern of contemporary rhetoric.

Joe has a friend who is a parasite whose politics are a reflection of his parasitism. (You can decide for yourself whether s/he's a corporate welfare beneficiary or not.) At breakfast this morning Joe disclosed that his friend told him s/he likes engaging in political rhetoric with the sole purpose of creating red-faced spitting rage. I suggested Joe upgrade his friends.

With this in mind I had this twitter exchange wherein my interlocutor said, "the art of argument seems to be lost these days, usually ends in insults flying, does web make it too impersonal?". This question reminded me of my breakfast conversation, because I believe there are powerful economic forces mitigating against rational argument and for insults & ad hominem attacks.

To see what I mean, fix in your mind a clear mental picture of your typical cable news show discussing the issues of the day. All I notice are paid consultants shouting "bumper sticker  slogans" at other paid consultants and trying to grab the microphone from the others. The most recent innovation in cable news has been for the moderators to abandon any pretense of fairness and get in on the shouting themselves.

It would be a lot smarter of you to turn off your television and pick up one of Plato's Dialogs. They are just collections of guys talking to each other. So, you can read these guy's bull-session transcripts without minoring in Philosophy. In fact, it's better if you aren't into philosophy, because the point I'm making is their cordiality. In the Dialogs, each of the guys talking to Socrates is a representative of a distinct partisan camp.Yet nobody resorts to name-calling, personal insults, or any of the other ugly behaviors that characterize contemporary political discourse such as I've described elsewhere.

You might think that I'm about to advocate Poling's Theory of Devolution here to explain what happened between Plato's day and today, but instead I have a simple Marxist observation, "Conflict sells newspapers."

Sure, the guys on the cable news shows might attract intelligent and articulate members of the distinct partisan camps in contemporary society. But they'll just talk using big words in long sentences that induhviduals will have to think about to understand. Cable news shows are not in the business of informing or educating the public about issues, they are in the business of selling advertising. They can charge more for Poly-Grip if they can attract the middle and bottom of the bell curve who just care to see the fight. And the true believers who can't imagine the truth is more nuanced than a bumper sticker slogan.

Unless you don't know which brand of denture adhesives to buy, I suggest you shy clear of cable news shows. If you live in the shallow end of the gene pool, then find some blogs that pander to your current political polarity and you can cocoon without being challenged to think.

Instead you might pick up a copy of Plato's Dialogs and read it through enough times to learn how to discuss issues in a reasoned and civil fashion. And when you finish, let's chat like humans about what you know and what you're interested in learning about.

The Party Party

In honor of the upcoming end of the latest season of political madness in the US, I present to you a little story that I wrote several years ago when William F Buckly was still alive.

 

I was there back when it all got started. Will, well you know--you've seen him on television. He's like that in real life. Only more so. If you can believe that's possible. So, whenever Will was in the Motley Eagle, I'd make a bee-line for him. Because I knew something would happen.

It was a quiet night and Will was watching the news on the television over the bar. I sat down next to him and bought a round.

"'Sup, Will?"

"Shhh! I'm listening to this."

I looked up and saw the politician talking to Larry King. Some Nixon speechwriter had seized control of a billionaire's plaything. Half the lemmings that had followed the billionaire into an electoral fjord in the last election were fighting the other half who rallied behind a transcendental meditation guru. A Federal Court gave said speechwriter twelve megabucks to go out, run advertisements and get the votes of 0% of the electorate. Will is a lot of things, but political junkie he's not.

The talking heads on the television were a sure cure for insomnia, but after a glance I was watching something much more interesting: Will's smirk. You've seen it. Some smarty-pants out East, the guy who wrote that Blackford Oakes spy novel I bought at a garage sale--he called that smirk coprophagous.

So, I watched Will until an ad came on CNN.

"Ok, Will, you're dreaming up a prank. I can see it in your expression."

Will's eyebrows made a half-hearted attempt at looking hurt. The smirk remained, but his voice had a mock-reproachful tone. "Now, what could make you think I had something sneaky in mind. I'm merely acquainting myself with the political process. It's part of my civic duty to become part of the informed electorate."

"You've never voted in your life."

Will put his hand over his heart and looked at the ceiling. I think that Buckley guy would have called the gesture disingenuous. "Sad, but true. However, I now have a reason to vote--a vision if you will."

"Will, how much have you been drinking?"

"I'm as sober as a Deacon." Larry King came back from commercials at that moment. "Look at that man," Will indicated the politician. "He's wasting his time, and the time of everyone who's getting all caught up in his run for President."

I started wondering if Will was going to need a white suit coat with sleeves that lace up the back.

"The government gave that guy twelve million dollars, and what's he doing? He's wasting it! Do you know what he's spending the money on?"

I'm not an expert in things political. I temporized. "I suppose he's spending it flying around the country, printing up yard signs and running commercials."

"Exactly! A phenomenal waste of money! Something must be done." Will's disingenuous way was replaced with fiery passion. His eyes were wide open. I saw a wildness there.

"Uh, Will," I was getting a little scared that Will was getting ready to check into a rubber room.
"How would you spend twelve million dollars?"

The smirk was back. Will leaned back and put his hands behind his head. "I'd throw a party."

I sighed heavily in relief. He hadn't gone crackers after all. He was merely putting together the biggest prank of his life. "All you have to do is talk the government into giving you the money."

"The government gave that guy money," Will said.

"But you're not a serious candidate."

Will hitched his thumb at the TV. "Serious. Like that guy and the billionaire before him. Yeah right! Those guys are a red nose and floppy shoes away from paying dues to the clown union."

Three days later, Will finagled his way onto the local radio station's morning drive-time talk show. He rolled tape on the interview and sent it along with bottles of booze to radio talk show hosts. He put up a web site and after that, every third sentence he spoke mentioned the Internet address. He got another interview on a nationwide late night talk show, shoehorned between an Apostle of the First Church of Elvis Reorganized, and an Alien stranded on Earth after locking his keys inside his flying saucer. At least, that’s what he claimed. Tapes of that interview with attached bottles of booze made their way to more talk show hosts all over the country.

Will's big break came from the strangest place. A Producer at NPR had a bad cold and couldn't sleep. He got lemon and honey from his pantry and sought a bottle of whiskey to mix up his grandmother's cure. The bottle he found was one of Will's with the cassette tape duct-taped to it. Unable to sleep, the Producer popped in the tape and sipped his medicine. The alcohol fogged his brain enough that he left a voicemail for his secretary asking to set up an interview with Will. More alcohol helped the Producer forget the request until the day of Will's interview on Morning Edition. If he'd remembered while sober, he'd have cancelled the interview. At least, that’s what he told the New York Times afterwards.

Nevertheless, Will dutifully called the radio station in Boston at the appointed time and after a few minutes wait he was on the air.

"I'm talking to William Jefferson who's one of the minor candidates in this year's election."

"I'm not a minor. If you want to check my ID, I am of age."

"No, I didn't mean to say you were a minor. But that your party is a minor party."

"I’ll have you know that my party, the Party Party, does not allow minors as members. You have to prove you're over 21."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know. I'm belaboring the point because it's impolitic to in any way encourage children to drink. The purpose of the Party Party is drinking after all." Will's voice betrayed his characteristic smirk.

"Of course, but you can't be seriously suggesting that your candidacy is to promote drinking."

"Heavens, no. My candidacy is to promote a single huge nationwide party four years from now. If I can get just 5% of the vote, I'll get money from the Federal Government that I'll spend on a honkin' huge party four years from now."

"But that's a misuse of federal funds."

"The Party Party's convention four years from now will be a valid political campaign expense. And it'll be an even bigger party if I get more than 5%."

"But that's irresponsible."

"Not necessarily, we'll hold the party on my Uncle's farm and everyone will have to park several miles away to be bussed in. They'll hand their keys to the bus driver and nobody will get his keys back until a breath-alizer says he's sober enough to drive."

"What about the issues?"

"What about them."

"What's you're position on Social Security?"

"I don't have one. It's someone else's problem."

"What about taxes?"

"Ask someone who wants to actually get elected. It'll be his problem."

"Are you suggesting you don't… you don't want to win the election?"

"Of course not! Do you think I'm crazy? If I won the election, I'd have to worry about Social Security and taxes. I don't want anything to do with that kind of stuff."

"What if you're elected?"

"That won't happen. I'm just going for 5% of the vote. Maybe I'll get more. But in order to get my first electoral vote, I'll need 51% of the votes in some state or another. That's why there are exactly two major parties. If I get any electoral votes, I'll give them to charity."

"You're making a mockery of the electoral process."

"Come on. I'm a piker next to you guys in the press. All I want is to have a party four years from now. You guys want to save the world. Don't you dare call me irresponsible."

"But… but… but… you're asking people to throw their votes away."

"No, I'm asking citizens to me give their votes in exchange for a party."

"That's bribery. You're offering to buy votes."

"And that would be different if I offered voters a subsidy, or tax break, or an entitlement. Not everyone in the country can qualify for a Mohair subsidy or a Helium depletion allowance, but everyone can enjoy a party."

"How will you do that?"

"On the day after the election, I'll figure out how much money I'll get from the Feds and announce the date of the Party Party's convention. Everyone who can prove he's a registered voter shows up at my Uncle's farm and we drink twelve million dollars worth of booze."

"That's immoral."

"We'll get soft drinks, too."

"Think of what you're doing to the electoral process."

"From what you guys tell me, most people don't vote. And from you guys tell me, well over 5% of the electorate remains undecided right now. If you haven't decided who you want to vote for by now, you really don't care for politics. So, you might as well cast your vote for something you do care about."

"Well, you've certainly given us something to think about. Thank you for your time, Mr. Jefferson."

You've probably heard the rest. The bit about Howard Stern hearing the interview on NPR and calling Will the next morning. How Rush Limbaugh got on the air all hot and bothered and then Will called Rush promising there'd be cigars at the party. A few days later, there was Will sitting next to Larry King shining that coprophagous smirk at America.

Anyhow, be sure to bring one of those plastic parkas in case it rains Saturday. I'm working crowd control, so I'll probably be busy. Hope you enjoy the Party.

One Thing To Remember About Polling

You may have some interest in the upcoming election. If so, I'm sorry. You should seek treatment. But until you do, here is one helpful tip that may help you survive the next fortnight.

My name is Poling. I'm going to talk about polling. And I've been hearing a lot about polling lately. You don't need an advanced degree in Mathematics to realize that Republicans will vote for their guy, Democrats will vote for their guy.

And Whigs (like me) will vote for the right guy.

The people who put compile polls realize this and they can adjust how many Rs and Ds they put into their sample to get whatever number they want. You might think that those evil lefty liberal newsies will put in a bunch of Ds to make their guy look good, or you might think that those corporate drones will put in a bunch of Rs to suck up to their bosses (who go around in striped pants like the Monopoly guy). (Nobody bothers with Whigs, so my opinion doesn't count.)

All these news outlets who do opinion polls have one thing in common: they like money. And there's more money in telling the story of a close game that's tied with two out in the ninth inning than the story of a game that's a lopsided 10-to-0 blowout. If there's going to be a landslide victory that has Donkeys or Elephants dancing in the streets, we'll never hear about it until the last minute.

(Incidentally, I think this upcoming election has been a foregone conclusion for the last year. If the final result is close, then I'm wrong and you should not pay any further heed to my prognostications.)

The way we get political news is what's wrong with American politics. Contrast it with Plato's dialogs. You have Socrates chatting up guys who forcefully disagree with him, yet Socrates gives those he disagrees with all the time in the world to explain their positions. When Socrates interrupts, it is not to contradict the fellow, but to get him to clarify some point he might not clearly articulate. Socratic questioning often brings to light things out unintended consequences of the position as well. By this means, the reader comes to understand all the different points of view and has the facts in hand to make tradeoffs between them.

This makes for boring TV.

If a politician says, "I favor buggy whip tariffs and my opponent is a poopy-head." The substantive buggy-whip advocacy will be edited out because the ad hominem attack sells more papers. Is the public diminished by this? Yes. Is there a better way? Yes. Is it to take the profit motive out of news coverage? NO WAY.

The better way starts with you, dear reader. You have the power to sift through the good, the bad and the ugly. Ignore the advocacy-speech of both parties and the news media and google for primary sources. Read the text of the propositions on the ballot. Choose that which corresponds to what you believe is best.

The ancient Greeks distinguished between politicians who were like confectioners and physicians. The confectioners dispense sweets that rot your teeth, but taste good, while the physicians dispense bitter tasting medicines that are good for health.

When a country is going through economically painful times, the electorate will appreciate a candidate who feels their pain and promises analgesics. But pain-killers are not cures, and thus we see places mired in economic doldrums for generations.

I think we saw this in Argentina when Juan Peron took power and set a fairly advanced 2nd-world country onto the path that has brought it to its current status. Meanwhile, countries that the US had bombed into rubble or that started out with nothing have far surpassed the economic performance and standard of living of Argentina.

It is too easy to say this is a left versus right thing. I want to suggest this is a confection versus medicine thing.

A populace that's been devastated or that has never had anything, may tolerate some short-term pain because they've become inured to pain. They can go off their economic analgesics and take the bitter pill. After the economic poisons are flushed out of the system, the society is positioned to enjoy strong growth. Conversely, a nation that's comfy where they are will choose the drug to help them get through another term of economic decline.

Does this fit into a 10-second sound-bite? No. Does it give you any coded message about who to vote for in the next election? I already told you: Vote Whig. Neither the Rs nor the Ds are promising to stop handing out confections and start handing out bitter pills.