This Is Not the End

[Valin]

National Review:

Against the apocalypse-peddlers

Kevin D. Williamson

November 4, 2016

 

Election Day is overrated. The days just before Election Day are the worst.

 

Election Day is overrated because elections are overrated. Elections are useful for one thing, and it is an important one: allowing the general public to check the people and parties in power. For all the “throw the bums out” rhetoric, we historically have not done that very often, though in recent years we have swung erratically and dramatically in both presidential and congressional elections. We tolerate more than we should, but we can, when needed, show the powers that be the door.

 

Beyond that critical – irreplaceable — function, elections are a pretty dumb way to make decisions. Consider three controversial issues: the national debt, our anti-terrorism efforts in the Middle East, and climate change. To get a broad general understanding of the competing policy agendas touching any one of those issues requires a considerable amount of work; to gain a real command of any one of those issues at anything approaching real expertise requires a commitment of years of study and discipline; to truly master any one of those issues is not an avocation, but a career. Never mind that ordinary voters have neither the time nor in most cases the capacity to do that for one of those subjects, much less all three — much less everything we expect federal officials to deal with — the people running for president do not have that expertise, either, nor the time nor, in most cases, the capacity to develop that expertise. Of course they have advisers, but in most cases they lack the training and background to evaluate those advisers as advisers in the relevant field. Instead, they are forced to rely on such nebulous considerations as personal trust and, inevitably, political expediency.

 

To bundle every important national question (and a great many things that really should not be national questions) into two packages, Option R and Option D, and then reach a decision between them by asking whatever unwieldy cross section of legal adults — out of our 320 million citizens — who are interested enough to show up and weigh in on the question to pick one out of two (or even four) options — you could hardly come up with a system better guaranteed to produce incoherent, contradictory, and ignorant outcomes.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

A Poem for All Seasons

 

The theme of this election year

Was Victory or Bust!

I raised my pen for battle

Now Im crawling in the dust

 

What doesnt kill me makes me strong,

Ive scrawled here in the dirt

Well, November may not kill me

But its really gonna hurt

 

Ive no idea of what went wrong

No notion, not the slimmest

Instead of best and brightest

We got the worst and dimmest

 

Those folks who covet power

As a toy that they can play with

And validate their status

By the stuff they get away with

 

Escaping any consequence

Or justice, as it were

The way that she enabled him

The Left enabled her

 

For what? I ask the left in vain

Again their answer fails

No profit, man, to lose your soul

But, damn it, Rich, for Wales?

 

Tomorrow, whats beloved now

Might well become despised

The stars might disappear tonight

I wouldnt be surprised

 

Ill simply keep my powder dry

And go and stock the larder

And promise next election year

Illversify much harder.

By tarzanajoepoetry|October 13th, 2016