POLITICS 2024 (NOTHING AGAINST CHEERLEADERS)

HOW TO SURVIVE UNTIL ELECTION DAY BY THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT POLITICS.

“Hey-HEY! Ho-HO! <Insert Name Here> has GOT to GO!” (Political Cheerleaders Everywhere)

It's Presidential Election Season, Dear Reader... how best to avoid the inherent stress and madness? (Personally, I've been keeping my brain busy with highly detailed medieval history podcasts.) When it comes to politics, the best metaphor I can think of for illustrative dissection and symbolic organ-harvesting is high school basketball, the fundamental components of which are the Players, Coaches, Referees... and CHEERLEADERS. (I have nothing against cheerleaders; indeed, some of my best old girlfriends were cheerleaders.)

The Players are equivalent to the candidates... all they care about is winning, period... as well they should. The Coaches, meanwhile, are the pollsters and political advisor class– they are as focused on winning as the players, but they are also knowledgeable and realistic about their teams’ chances against their current opponent, and so they focus on formulating viable game plans and strategies for maximizing their winning chances, however slim. The Referees are the (theoretically) free and impartial press as envisioned by our founding fathers, the essential force that would keep our politicians honest... and sadly no longer exists as such. And the CHEERLEADERS are in all caps because they comprise what has become by far the most important group as it relates to current politics.

It is a sad commentary on society that the American citizenry's collective ignorance in the areas of Law, History, and Civics 101 has reduced most of our population– including the press– to the political equivalent of CHEERLEADERS… arch-partisan pom-pom wavers who know next to nothing about the contest right before them and yet remain absolutely certain that their team is the best, never commits a foul, and that the other team can only win by cheating. Political Cheerleaders-- on both sides of the political divide-- tend to operate from very small fact tables and instead hold political views that are based primarily on ideology and are seemingly wired directly to their emotions.

TEACHER-- Let us hear you use the word "winsome" in a sentence.

DannyM.-- You win some, you lose some.

Rather than strive to expand their knowledge and understanding, Political Cheerleaders tend to stovepipe themselves with one-sided blather that corroborates their existing world view, scrupulously avoiding exposure to anything that might challenge it or take them out of their narrow comfort zones. It certainly doesn’t help that our once (mostly) fair-minded press– the news divisions of television, radio, and newspapers– have prioritized partisanship, profits, and pom-pom waving over fairly and intelligently presenting all sides of every issue. And why not? There’s no money in presenting the plain truth, after all, especially when they can stimulate viewership by broadcasting what was once merely the daily news as a never-ending series of life-and-death crises... even the weather--

I’m old enough to remember when winter snowfall wasn’t newsworthy… but nowadays the mere possibility of January snowflakes activates our local @StormTeam24 wall-to-wall coverage complete with dramatic storm-cam footage of actual snow plows and Doppler radar imagery. Anything for eyeballs, I guess.

But what I think is worse than the shameless dramatization of everyday events is the obvious death of objectivity in political coverage. Alas, it seems that the referees have morphed into cheerleaders and chosen their favorite teams, depriving us of the flow of factual content so necessary to an informed electorate.

And so, dear readers, I respectfully ask– have YOU become a Political Cheerleader? For useful self-examination we channel Jeff Foxworthy:

• If you get most of your “news” from Facebook or Twitter, you might be a cheerleader;

• If you have a strong opinion about abortion rights (either way) but have never actually read Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and the recent Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, you might be a cheerleader;

• If you have strong feelings about private gun ownership (either way) but have never actually read D.C. v. Heller, (both the thoroughly detailed majority opinion and the eloquent and scholarly dissent) you might be a cheerleader;

• If you have strong feelings (either way) about the disposition of immigrant children at our southern border but lack any familiarity with the Flores Consent Decree, then you might be a cheerleader;

• If you hold statements made by the opposition to a higher standard of proof than those made by your own side, you might be a cheerleader; (While it is certainly understandable to believe your side more readily than the other, unequal standards of proof are a downhill path to self-delusion.)

• And finally, if you are easily triggered to anger by the mere mention of politicians or policies you don’t like… if you can’t stand to even be around people with views different from yours… if you’ve permanently damaged relationships with (former) friends and even family members because of politics… then being a cheerleader is perhaps the least of your problems.

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of the above, you are far from alone. How did we get here? How did the richest, free-est, most powerful nation in the history of the world become so polarized? I find it astonishing that we live in an age with nearly unfettered access to information (like the above-referenced court cases) and yet it seems that people are less informed than ever about the issues supposedly important to them. There are a lot of institutions and simple realities worthy of blame for this. For a concise illustration of the role of the American media, let’s look at what I think is an especially great bit of television drama.

In the HBO series THE NEWSROOM, actor Jeff Daniels portrayed cable news anchor Will McAvoy, the character whose epic rant (profanity alert) in the show’s pilot about the present state of America has become an Internet legend. Less popular among YouTubers, however, is his apology on behalf of the media– what I consider one of the very finest and most poignant moments in one of my favorite shows of all time. It still gets me wistfully pondering an alternative universe whenever I contrast Anchorman McAvoy’s vision of what a free press could and should be with the stinking, corrupt sewer of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda it has sadly become. (And if you’re still pissed at McAvoy for bullying the “sorority girl” in the epic rant, know that they fix that nicely in Season One’s finale.) If you are one-tenth as interested in the interface of politics and journalism as I am, I highly recommend paying HBO so you can watch this fantastic series in its entirety.

So, how does one discuss politics with Political Cheerleaders? You don’t, because more likely than not you’ll find yourself engaged in a shouting match, or at the very least what I like to call a “Sumo on Ice” argument, i.e., one characterized by each side ineffectually spinning his or her feet in the absence of the traction afforded by a mutually acceptable set of truths upon which each side can postulate a position. And since you’ll never change the minds of the cheerleaders, you might as well join me in my explorations of delicious autumn cookery and brushing up on medieval history. that way, if at Thanksgiving dinner some controversial topic arises, you might remember to simply smile and say, "pass the gravy, please." And when someone scores a touchdown in one of the plethora of televised NFL games you can just just remark, "How 'bout them Anglo-Saxons!"

Meanwhile, when pondering the avalanche of campaign ads currently bombarding your ears and filling your inbox, you might want to keep a few basic facts in mind; for instance--

 

AMERICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.

Never was, never will be, and was never intended to be an actual "democracy."

Pure democracy is sometimes pithily described as two foxes and a chicken voting on what's for dinner, i.e., simple majority rule. We, however, are not a pure democracy but rather by design a Constitutional Democratic Republic-- "Constitutional" in that we have an established set of principles for choosing our leaders who make and enforce our laws, as well as for making the laws themselves; a "Republic" in that our elected representatives, not we the actual citizenry, make and enforce our laws; and yet "Democratic" in that we the citizens get to choose these representatives, and our laws must be passed in democratic fashion by a majority of our elected representatives. In a constitutional democratic republic, a chicken elected to the dinner menu by the vulpine majority can say, "Hold on... even though I am in the minority, we have duly enacted laws that protect the lives of EVERYONE, not just the majority." The chicken might rightly add that someday the foxes might be the minority, and the same set of laws will spare them from the winter coat factory at the whim of the numerical avian majority.

AMERICA DOES NOT HOLD "NATIONAL ELECTIONS."

Never did, probably never will. Rather, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November of every leap year, America holds 51 individual statewide elections (50 states plus the District of Columbia) to elect slates of electors who then cast their votes in the Electoral College for the next President. Which brings us to...

THE (F-ING?) ELECTORAL COLLEGE 

The Founding Fathers created the system called the Electoral College, most likely (depending upon whom one asks) as either A.) a buffer of last resort to prevent a charismatic yet dubious candidate from attaining the Presidency by appealing directly to the ignorant citizenry; or B.) to prevent a small handful of high-population states --and the handful of big cities within them-- from choosing the Presidents for the rest of the country. Whichever the case, the Electoral College system makes the quadrennial Presidential election not a popular vote but rather the summation of a winner-take-all contest in each state and then a nationwide race to a simple majority of at least 270 electoral votes.

  Article II of the constitution established the Electoral College thusly--

"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. (Thus we have 100 Senators + 435 Congresspeople + 3 votes for D.C. = 538 Electoral Votes. --DM)

"The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse (sic) by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse (sic) the President. But in chusing (sic) the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

"The Congress may determine the Time of chusing (sic) the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States."

(In 1804 the 12th Amendment updated our Presidential election process, and here's the part that even most political commentators get wrong-- if the final Electoral College tally is 269-269, or if a 3rd-party candidate wins enough votes so no one reaches the magical 270 mark, then the determination of the winner falls to the House of Representatives; HOWEVER, for the vote in the House, each state gets ONE vote, meaning that California's 52-member congressional delegation-- 40 democrats and 12 republicans-- gets only one vote, the same as Wyoming's one-member delegation. Such a scenario, therefore, is presently tilted by happenstance toward the GOP. --DM) 

The biggest criticism of the Electoral College arises in the occasional case when the winner of the Electoral College majority is at odds with the "popular vote." (Which does not in fact actually exist; see points above.) This anomaly happened in 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. Perhaps the most exact analogy for this is the 1960 World Series, in which the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees 4 games to 3 despite being badly outscored in the series as a whole, 55 runs to 27. Under the operative rules of baseball, the number of games won and lost-- not the number of total runs scored in them-- determines the winner.

Pittsburgh infielder Bill Mazeroski reaches home plate after his epic walk-off series-winning homer.

Every four years there are calls to abolish the Electoral College, and there is indeed a mechanism for eliminating or updating it-- passage of a new Constitutional Amendment as per Article V of the Constitution. If this were to ever transpire, it would likely lead to a nationwide popular vote. However, for the nationwide vote total to be meaningful and legal, every state plus D.C. would have to vote under the same exact rules. That would be problematic, for each state has its own peculiar election laws and mechanisms. In 2016, for example, the losing candidate actually garnered some 3 million more total votes than the winner; however, most of that number came from California, which had conducted (uniquely, among all the states) a "jungle primary" that had picked two senatorial candidates from the same party for the statewide general election, thereby generating far greater turnout by that party than the other side. Such a thing would never pass constitutional muster were we to adopt a nationwide popular vote for the POTUS.

* * * * * * *

It is early September as I write this, and I'm bracing for nearly two more months of ultra-partisan ear garbage. Here's one more list, some tips I've found helpful for figuring stuff out about politics and politicians--

Develop A Reliable BS Meter

I am known by many of my friends to have a reasonably accurate BS Meter, the basis of which, in my estimation, is nothing more than the combination of a logical mind and a basic working knowledge of subjects such as science, statistics, probability, and civics. For just one example of something that recently set it off, this item used to make the rounds on Facebook because people who read it took it at face value and uncritically re-posted it–

July 2022 has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays.

This happens only once every 823 years. 

The Chinese call it “silver pockets full” or "money bags."

A few seconds of brain activity should spark the realization that this happens every time the first day of a 31-day month-- January, March, May, July, August, October, and December-- falls on a Friday, as it did not only in July of 2022 but also in December of 2023, March of 2024, August of 2025, etc., for an average of about once per year.

If you are over 55, a rigorous high school education is a sufficient basis for a good healthy BS Meter. For the relatively youthful among us, I recommend visiting used bookstores or scouring eBay for textbooks older than 1979, when the U.S. Department of Education was established.

I KNOW NOTH-ING!

The actual definition of “knowledge” is so strict that, when it comes to politics, it precludes much of what we strongly believe to be true. So… take everything you hear with a grain or more of salt until your cardiologist orders otherwise. Always allow room in your heart and mind to consider the possibility that something you strongly believe might turn out to be wrong, and vice-versa. Recall that it was the CIA that used the term “conspiracy theory” to ridicule and discredit those who suspected that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t solely responsible for the JFK assassination… and also recall that yesterday’s “conspiracy theory” is often today’s more widely accepted explanation.

It’s All On Tape

With a quick visit to YouTube and a few clicks you can see just about anything. For just two examples, how about footage of Democrat leaders positing (Pre-Trump) the need for a southern border wall, or of Republican leaders, having torpedoed President Obama’s SCOTUS nomination of Merrick Garland, swearing that they would never try to seat a GOP nominee during an election year? (Like they did without hesitation in late 2020 when RBG died.) Although a lot of politicians seem to sometimes forget this, EVERYTHING is recorded for posterity.

The Petrosian Test

The Armenian-Soviet chess Grandmaster Tigran Petrosian, the 9th official World Chess Champion (1963-69), was notorious for his excruciatingly cautious style of play. In stark contrast to the dashing and romantic gambiteers of the 19th century who sacrificed pieces with wild abandon, GM Petrosian relied on slow, almost imperceptible strangulation of the board and his opponents’ positions until they found themselves paralyzed and gasping for air. His successor as champion GM Boris Spassky once quipped, “If Petrosian ever offers to sacrifice a piece, immediately resign!” implying that if Petrosian ever ventured so far out of character as to sacrifice material, it was because it would surely lead to a game-winning forced checkmate. To generalize from this, whenever someone strays way out of their normal M.O., it is probably for a really good reason; applied to the media’s coverage of politics, we all pretty much know how, say, Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow will cover a particular issue because they are both arch-partisan and similarly predictable. However, I think it is safe to say that if you ever hear Hannity fact-check Donald Trump or Maddow fact-check Kamala Harris, their words would count for way more than usual, and we should pay close attention.

The Reverse Footwear Test

Whenever you hear about a politician getting in some sort of trouble, ask yourself (and answer honestly) whether he or she would be treated differently by the media or even the DOJ if the situation were the mirror opposite, i.e., if the shoe were on the other foot. Sometimes, it seems, the only difference between an art thief and someone who takes nice pictures is their political affiliation and the biases of the news outlets covering them.

The Binary Correction Coefficient

Are the major Mainstream Media outlets biased? Yes, but media bias can be hard to see when following a particular outlet with which you mostly agree. However, we can turn to the fascinating and useful world of probability for an easy and objective answer. The odds of flipping a coin seven times and getting heads seven times are 1 in 128 (1 in 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2.) Even perfectly fair newspapers make mistakes and need to issue corrections… but if their inaccuracies all paint one side more negatively than the other– if they need to print seven corrections in a row that all go in the same direction– then we can infer that their reportage is systemically biased.

Open Your Purse

Are the Liberal Democrats trying to ban all guns and promote CRT in the classroom? Are the Conservative Republicans trying to outlaw abortion everywhere and allow prayer in schools? The quickest way to get the most honest answers to these and similar questions is to go right to the source-- just donate $20 to both the DNC and RNC and get on their email lists– they will regularly tell you in plain English what they want to do with the money they want you to keep sending. (Pro-Tip: you only have to donate once for a lifetime membership to these email groups.)

The Truth Doesn’t Care Where It Came From

When it comes to media coverage of politics, if something you’ve heard is true, then it doesn’t matter where you heard it. Indeed, what’s more important is where you DIDN’T hear it, because Lies of Omission are even more insidious than outright falsehoods; no correction is necessary for something that was never printed or aired.

Which brings us to–

No Pain, No Gain

Since Lies of Omission are so common and insidious, you need to listen to both sides of the media and keep a sharp ear for stories that one side is covering and the other isn’t. To put it bluntly, if you really want to know what is going on, you need to listen to people you don’t like saying things you don’t want to hear. If you do so with a wide open mind, you might actually hear a point or two from the other side that you grudgingly agree with.

And FINALLY–

Whether you are debating someone, scouring the news, or simply observing the world around you, always try to remember that WHAT is right is more important than WHO is right. By willing to be wrong once in a while, in the long run you will be right most of the time.

ANY QUESTIONS?

Why are our politicians so old?

Because we keep voting for them.

Why has American politics become almost indistinguishable from professional wrestling?

That's an insult to professional wrestling.

Why does it take a month or more to count the Presidential vote when AMERICAN IDOL can tally millions of votes in ten minutes?

I'm not sure, but perhaps we should adopt their system.

Is this the most important election EVER?

EVERY election is the most important election ever. Just remember that no matter who is elected, they'll never repeal the second law of thermodynamics... the one that suggests that everything eventually turns to crap.

And finally (REALLY finally)...

When did "Chuse" become "Choose?"

About the same time that everything started turning to crap.

NOTES:

I have an acronym for the tools required to figure out the truth in most circumstances-- "FLOSS," for Facts, Logic, Objectivity, Science, & Statistics. Remember to FLOSS daily.