A new art project that will (hopefully) depict the negotiations of young love.
Human relationships do not work as a zero-sum game. Let me take a moment to explain. A zero-sum game is where one side wins, which means the other side has to lose. In mathematical terms -1(the loser) + 1(the winner) = 0. So, everyone who plays this game will either go all out to win or they will end up losing completely. Faced with only those two outcomes, the game player is tempted to cheat. Especially if the stakes are potentially life or death. After all, in issues like the national debate over health care, the loser gets to die.
This is, of course, what we have seen played out over the course of the last two weeks in the appointment to the Supreme Court of a radical right judge who was accused by a credible witness of a disqualifying action. It is only a matter of the destruction of a judge’s career versus the defaming of a professional woman who was a teenage victim of attempted rape and sexual assault. It is a very serious zero-sum game set up maliciously in order to achieve political power for the white male ruling elite.
This zero-sum game was won by the grinning evil cartoon mutant man-turtle over the minions of Mad-Looker Booker and the forces of “being right but never winning”. The consequences are decades worth of malignant conservative rulings like the Citizens United Ruling and rulings about health care that take away things like protections for people like me with pre-existing conditions. Losers get nothing. And eventually, the winners have nothing to show for it because the sum is zero.
The orange-faced Trumpinator was right when he predicted we would soon reach a point when we were tired of so much winning. I am definitely tired of Trumpkins winning all the time, especially when they are so heartless in the way they bully and cheat. The problems with the court would not be so severe if the Republicans hadn’t cheated on Justice Merrick Garland’s nomination and stolen that one from Obama to give to old Pumpkinhead. And when it came time to let the FBI investigate the allegations brought up in the confirmation hearings, they cheated again by forcing the investigators to ignore so many corroborating witnesses. You can’t find proof of something by not looking for the proof. (Of course, they were obviously motivated to NOT find anything.)
The solution comes from the fundamental principles of representative democracy being explained repeatedly on various news outlets by Ohio Governor John Kasich. He has been pointing out that what we really need is bipartisanship in government. All sides need to bargain it out so that everybody wins something and nobody wins everything. Compromise is what the Congress is put in place to create. The Supreme Court solution would have been to rescind the tainted nomination and find a candidate that could be broadly supported by both sides.
But in the current era of ruthless Republicans obliterating and overruling diminishing Democrats, non-toxic bipartisan solutions are not going to happen. The two sides, the Neanderthals and their bonkable warclub targets, will continue to bash away at each other with their warclubs. And the Neanderthals will continue to cheat. And in the long run, everybody loses. The overall sum, after all, is zero.
Word Salad and Idea Casserole
In a world filled with interesting and engaging ideas, I get frustrated with the constant barrage of word salad on social media tossed at me by conservative friends. As Trump seems to be coming closer and closer to ending his administration with his own chaotic behavior, those who supported him are tossing more and more flavorless lettuce and rotted vegetables in the mix. I have to resist the urge to throw the same thing back at them. I do not resist such salad-making well. Witness my attempts to alter this stupid meme from a friend;
I admit, I kinda barfed half-digested word salad all over this one. I get tired of debating the issues only to be insulted like this and then accused of only insulting Trump and avoiding what they call the “Real Issues”, like Hillary giving a gazillion per cent of our uranium wealth to the Russians and Obama being the one guilty of colluding with Russians.
But, enough of that. It is time to make something healthier out of words and ideas. I have a lot of things on my mind, and I want to get a lot of them said before I die. So let me make some idea casserole, cooking a whole lot of very different ideas into one multivitamin dish.
The truth is I really can’t do anything about politics and government beyond expressing my beliefs and voting my conscience. I need to concentrate on telling stories. It is the one thing that still gives my life meaning through the pain, illness, and suffering. I am not dead yet. And, not being dead, I need to be writing.
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