Political Parties are Like Cable Channels

Political parties are like cable channels -- you have to buy the whole package, there is no menu of options from which to choose. If you buy basic cable, you are required to receive the home shopping network and the Spanish language stations even if you never watch them. If you speak Spanish, you still have to buy the English-language stations. In politics, the lesser of two evils becomes the only choice the voter has, in spite of the official party platform which may encompass a single position on a cornucopia of issues. Say the voter, for example, dislikes the health care reform package, but thinks that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wrong. Who to vote for? Or say the voter thinks torts are an effective remedy to rein in illegal business practices, but also believes in unrestricted gun ownership.

Back when McCain or Obama were the only entrees on the presidential menu, independent voters had to weigh, for example, the thought that McCain would declare war on Iran and "refused to parlay" with enemies against Obama's support of mental health screenings like "teen screen" that would allow government to trump parents' authority over their children (both stupid and arrogant ideas in my opinion). Well, under the "lesser of two evils" we got Obama and the "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" medical program.

This exclusivity has led to many of the aberrations in our political system. Third party candidates -- or even moderates in both major parties -- are vehemently opposed by whichever party will lose votes, and encouraged by the party which has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Look at the venom unleashed against Ralph Nader, Ross Perot and Ron Paul by various people and parties. As long as they remain a tiny slice of voters, they can be ignored. But let them gain some footing, as did Perot, and the reds and blues turn purple in their animosity.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry a while back called moderates "the mushy middle" -- obviously preferring extremists whose views are totally polarized and therefore easier for the unwashed to understand in quick sound bytes. Right now, the extremists have it, from Sarah Palin to Barack Obama.

So is there a solution to extremist politics? According to Governor Schwarzenegger there is. On a recent Jay Leno show, he claimed that politicizing the redistricting process creates purely red and blue districts that promote far-right and far-left candidates. Schwarzenegger is promoting a non-partisan redistricting commission that will provide more balanced representation and thus more moderate candidates that will better represent the bulk of voters. Try getting that bit of democracy through the polarized California Legislature....

The Democratic Basis of Reality

I am crazy and nothing I write should be taken seriously. I took it seriously and now I'm nuts.

Crazy means disagreeing with those around you about things they hold sacred. Agreements build reality. That is a chair, that is a table, they are solid and you can sit on one and put your dinner on the other. Oak makes a good solid reality, yes it does.

But then, scientists said the chair and table were made of tiny particles with great spaces between them and were not solid, they just seemed that way to the ignorant. So scientists were crazy, but the sane were a bit unsure, since they did so poorly in high school science classes.

But then the scientists began a campaign to convert the recalcitrant. And they did. Once the reality changed (reality being a sort of democracy where people vote on what is real and the majority are sane and the minority are crazy) people continued to sit on chairs and put dinners on tables, but now they looked at furniture differently because they suspected that if they looked closely enough, they could see tiny planets and stars in the wooden table top. And even though there were huge empty spaces between those tiny particles, they somehow could still hold up the meatloaf. And a few neurotics may have wondered why the spaces in the glass of lemonaide didn't sink into the spaces in the table, but they were worried about looking stupid and so didn't ask.

History is full of crazy people. Those who thought the Earth rotated around the sun, that life began in pools of mud hit by lightning, that God was dead, that chewing tobacco was a good treatment for hookworms, that area 51 holds an alien spaceship, and that electricity through the brain was helpful in bringing crazy people back into agreement with their neighbors.

Some of those ideas caught on, won elections and those who agreed became sane. Others, not wanting to be crazy, signed on even though they had doubts. Only the holdouts who refused to subscribe to this new religion, this new reality, became insane. Like the guys who still have "Bush/Cheney" bumper stickers on their travel trailers. You can see the milder cases in England which is a sort of museum for odd people. Or here in the U.S. you will find them in backwards areas, chewing tobacco to keep away the hookworms, taking Prozac for constipation and wearing copper bracelets to ward off arthritis. The real stalwarts are strapped to tables in psychiatric hospitals with voltage going through the brain because aunt June is still alive to them and giving good advice on the stock market. When the electricity is turned off they have amnesia and thus become sane: "Aunt June? Huh?" Some of them forget their own names and can start a new life -- just like being born. But I get ahead of myself.

Universities Limit Free Speech to Avoid Hurt Feelings

Universities in the U.S. are so outraged by speech that may offend, that many of them have instituted speech codes outlawing speech that "hurts people's feelings." FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, strangely enough, is fighting battles all over the U.S. to remove isolated little dog pens where students may enjoy freedom of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution. These so-called "Free Speech Zones" are an attempt by university administrations to limit conflict, and while perhaps motivated by concerns that minorities are not subject to racial, religious or other harrassment, many are simply attempts to move intense dialog off the campus proper. However, the campus proper is actually a good place for intense dialog. But Americans raised on violent television may stupidly equate harsh rhetoric or disagreeable discourse to physical assault and sue for emotional distress, post-talking stress syndrome, or hit somebody in the face, depending on which channels they most frequently watch. For a good lesson in intense debate, check out the British Parliament debates on YouTube where good humor seems to alleviate some of the rough edges.

Stupid Drivers, Smart Cars

The stupider drivers get, the smarter cars must become, if one subscribes to the EU version of our transportation future. Its Smart Vehicle Technology Quiz takes the driver through a series of 11 transportation technologies that attempt to compensate for bad driving. If you start to go to sleep while driving, the "Driver Drowsiness Monitoring and Warning System" will wake you up. It checks your heartbeat, eyelids and head position and sounds an alarm if you doze off. Drive too fast at night? Instead of the old idea of not overdriving your headlights, smart vehicle technology would equip you with a night vision system so you can see far off in the distance, travel at blinding speed without blinding oncoming drivers in your high beams. Drive too fast most of the time? Electronic obstacle and collision avoidance systems are for you. ABS, Electronic Brake Assist, Electronic Stability Control and Adaptive Cruise Control will keep the stupid driver out of trouble. And if all else fails, stupid's accident will be called in by his car -- using the EU's mandated eCall system -- along with his GPS coordinates.

These systems will save lives, because there are stupid drivers behind the wheel. Drivers who drink, text message, watch videos, drive too fast for conditions, tailgate, swerve in and out of lanes and so forth. But I don't like driving a car that's smarter than I am and that makes it OK to drive badly. We already have cars that park themselves because drivers are too lazy to learn to parallel park. The state protects us with mandatory seat-belt laws, mandatory motorcycle helmet laws, mandatory insurance etc.

The "freedom of the open road" may soon become just another train trip -- the car is in charge, and the former drivers are just along for the ride.

Who Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea?

In the trailer for the new Jay Leno show, Jay is doing his "Jaywalk" asking people questions. "Who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?" he asked a woman. She didn't know. "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" he asked. "Spongebob Squarepants," she said, with a big smile. A nice woman, cheerful, pleasant but ignorant, like a lot of us.

Spongebob, Jimmy Neutron and Futurama are creative and funny. Stewart and Colbert aren't. But a democracy of nice, cheerful, pleasant but ignorant people isn't a democracy at all. It's a made-to-order consumer society attracted and repelled at will by media, politicians, public relations and propaganda. The more pushed and pulled we are, the more cynical we get, the more appealing Stewart and Colbert become, and the less creative and cheerful things seem.

At the bottom of the pile are the "Oh just screw it" druggies, using everything from pot to Prozac, totally the effect of their environment and the chemicals in their pill bottles and crack pipes. As the society rattles down the tubes and flops into the basement you get California's bill to legalize marijuana, you get an avalanche of ads for anti-depressants, "male enhancement" products, etc. And like Spongebob -- "absorbent and yellow and porus are we."

The Stupid Person's Guide to Life: Shopping

If you feel powerful and wealthy carrying around a credit card with plenty of room for charges – get over it! Your financial health is determined by your income, expenditures and assets, not by a card. Credit cards do give a margin of security in an emergency, but they pull the rug out from such common-sense security measures as saving money, following a budget, living within one’s means, etc. Those things are hard to do, especially when one is living in a dream world of making minimum monthly credit card payments while purchasing more and more luxury items.

Luxuries

Luxury items are things that aren’t basic to your survival. Food, shelter, exercise, reliable transportation, a rainy day fund, insurance, ability to communicate to friends and family, being productive and having goals -- those are basic to survival. An exercise machine, bottled water, specialty ice cream, mochas and lattes are luxuries. Delusion enters in when luxuries – the exercise machine and bottled water – are justified because, “I’ll be healthier.” If the water in your town is suspect, get a faucet filter. If you want to run, run on the sidewalk.

Stopping by a drive-through Starbuck’s is a luxury. If you like to drink hot stimulants, make your own coffee or tea and buy it in large enough quantities so the unit price is low. Still a luxury, but don’t delude yourself that “If I stop for a triple-shot mocha, I’ll be more alert and get that promotion.” Hard work gets promotions, not caffeine and delusions.

Oral Entertainment

Food is necessary for the body’s health and energy. You could live quite well on rice, a little fish or meat, and soy sauce. Millions of people do it. Some foods are more properly classified as oral entertainment. Coffee, tea, sugar, spices, alcoholic drinks, desserts, are all entertainment, most of which have an adverse effect on the body’s health and energy level. There’s nothing wrong with a bowl of ice cream or a cup of coffee – just don’t delude yourself into thinking that you are partaking of nutrition. You are entertaining the body and yourself. That’s all. And if you have a fat bottom and pant going up stairs, don’t blame Ben and Jerry.

Three Thousand Chinese Kids Get Electroshock for “Internet Addiction”

More than 3,000 Chinese kids who spent too much time on the Internet -- defined by the Chinese government as more than six hours per day -- have been forced into a mental hospital and treated with electric shock and psychotropic drugs by a psychiatrist known as “Uncle Yang,” according to media reports in the Beijing News and UK’s Guardian. But Dr. Yang Yongxin – who runs an Internet addiction treatment center in a Chinese mental hospital – can no longer continue the practice under an order from the Chinese Ministry of Health which said that electro convulsive therapy has no foundation in research.