The Election Game

D-Day America is fast approaching. In just 58 days, some 130 million voters will have selected one of a half dozen names for President & Vice President of the U.S. The final tally may well depend on the number of Wishywashies who decide which of the lesser of evils to choose. This number might well add up to less than 150,000 when electoral votes are posted. This would mean that, in the final analysis, roughly 1 boob out of every 2,000 informed voters will carry the day, and therefore the fate of the Republic will depend on the indolent and/or clueless.

Oh, I hear the caterwauling of the Society for the Perpetual Care of Dumb Animals saying, "how dare you, picking on our poor little boobs -- they can't help it -- their parents were boobs, and their parents were boobs. What did you expect?" Our precious Constitution doesn't cast aside the votes of the lame and infirm and boobs. One man, one vote; of course, now it's one citizen.

I listened intently to most speakers at the Democratic Convention. There was a parade of ordinary elected officials and private citizens who cited the many virtues of the Democratic Party and the chosen nominees for the top spots. There was a constant background of popular younger-folk music that I didn't dance and jiggle to in front of my TV set. That's okay because I realize that jazz wouldn't do nor jitterbug big band music and certainly not these days good ole folk music and fiddling for square dancing, though fiddling maybe is more appropriate.

I can't blame Senator Obama and Senator Biden for not wanting to tell their supporters just how bleak the global situation actually is. If Emperor Nero had to worry about the citizens of Rome voting on his record, would he have worried about a backlash with his cruel treatment of that uppity religious cult who called themselves Christians? Hardly, the prototype soccer fans at the Colosseum needed their entertainment diversion because the good citizens of Rome didn't want to even think about the demise of their darling Empire.

That ole rascal Nero. Actually he was an interesting guy and in our age could have been a tremendously popular rock star. Loved loud music, the young adored him and it's only the liberal media that finally did him in. The Romans touted Pax Romana which is what our political leaders praise for our time. But Pax Romana was actually "peace on our terms", and, as long as you can get away with it, it's a banner that can fly high, just as our own warrior leader today brandished his "Mission Accomplished" banner on the deck of the embattled aircraft carrier Lincoln 6 miles from San Diego harbor. He did look like a gladiator didn't he, with that helmet tucked in the crook of his arm? Imagine what an immortalizing painter like Joshua Reynolds or Charles Wittson Peale could do with that pose. Precious.

But Roman politics during the Republic was crude by our standards, yet they had some virtuous characteristics. For one, if you were a candidate for the top job, you had to prove yourself as a military commander in chief by leading your own army in the conquest of foreign lands and/or wayward former Roman commanders. Wouldn't that be a better test than boasts of "I coulda if I had to".

Which leads to recollecting the Republican Convention. The made for TV spectacle reminded me of P.T. Barnum's travelling circus with the carnival atmosphere of hokum that featured the Greatest POW Who Ever Lived and the Beautiful Virgin Mother Princess of Wasilla, a mythical kingdom of Moose-eating Eskimos and Evangelicals.

I realize I'm clumsy in trying to appear objective. Actually, I'd be the first to admit that I'm a incurable rationalist. I believe that honesty is the best policy in politics as well as business and in life generally. I simply dislike liars and phonies and hoodwinkers. When I was a teenager, I went through a period when I exaggerated aspects of my personal life and soon found myself mired in the job of keeping track of to whom I'd told what. It was tiring as well as tiresome, I'm sure. I quit cold turkey for I didn't have the energy to keep up with my tiny web of lies. I still have a bad taste in my mouth at that period when I was a forlorn new guy in town and needed enhancement on my bio, or so I thought. How much more refreshing it would have been to be honest and candid, which was the case when I first wrote about my lack of character.

Has truth become so feeble in our current political climate that hokum reigns supreme? Have the people tired of bread and circus and want to listen to the shrill siren of the carnival barker? Perhaps.

Today, I'm thinking about Mr. Pant and whether he might be putting one over me. After all, I did initially approach him (and I bet you would have too seeing him looking like a bear) -- and, he did throw me for a loop chastising me for being late and demanding a stupid report nobody told me was due or even what the devil it was supposed to be about.

Do they have elections on his home planet or whatever space platform he happened to be hatched on? I imagine his kind are way ahead of us because we don't have anyone that I know about visiting far away planets or space platforms. And if they're way ahead of us, wouldn't they have figured out a better way of choosing all powerful leaders? Maybe they'd have a lottery to decide which infant would be educated solely to order others around, but with strict limitations on what mischief they could do, and if they did cross sacred lines they'd automatically implode and the next programmed leader would automatically take his place. Sort of like the bees and ants manage continuity of leadership.

Next time I see Mr. Pant, I'll try to wheedle out some juicy gossip about his home planet. Ha!