Update II

My week off was a good time to think about where I am, where I'm going, and where I want to be.  I'm going to take an indefinite break from writing about national security while I figure things out.

Bubbles

Wow!  Someone made a quiz that's supposed to tell how much of a bubble you live in.  The questions are kind of interesting, too.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-a-quiz-2/

Update

I've been on vacation for the past week, and finally made it home.  I visited with an old friend in Michigan, then drove to my Dad's place in Indiana.  We celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday (early), and I think it worked out fairly well. 

See,  Mom passed away six years ago and Dad has since remarried.  While our new step-mom is cool and all, Dad now has obligations to her side of the family that never existed before.  All of the children are still sort of feeling their way into what sort of relationships we're going to have with our newfound siblings.  Who the heck gets two step-brothers and three step-sisters when they're over 30!?!

Last year was a little odd, in that Dad celebrated Thanksgiving elsewhere, so my brothers and I had Thanksgiving (at Dad's house) on our own.  It didn't seem quite right.  This year, well...with work schedules and my vacation it just made sense to celebrate early.  I got to see three of my four brothers, plus a sister-in-law (and my Dad, step-mom, and a nephew from her side of the family).  I believe Dad did invite my new brothers and sisters as well, though they weren't able to do so this time. 

Of course, since we celebrated Thanksgiving early it means I can make other arrangements for the actual day.  I think I'll join my step-mom's family. 

Going to that sort of thing is part of how you transform strangers into family, you know?  It's slow and sometimes awkward, but in the end I think it's rather rewarding.

I have, of course, been paying close attention to the transition team and Trump's potential cabinet picks.  It's a bit like an itch that I just can't stop scratching.  I'm mostly lurking.  Listening, reading, still forming my own opinions on things.

Post Election

Since this seems to address some of the concerns raised in my previous post, I figured I'd place it here.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/politics/donald-trump-60-minutes-first-interview/index.html?sr=fbCNN111316donald-trump-60-minutes-first-interview0809PMVODtop

Post-Election

It's now been a couple of days since the election, and the shock is wearing off.  There are a couple of different articles out there trying to understand what happened.  I've been quiet mostly because I've been reading, and lurking, and figuring out my own reaction.  I don't like to blog something when someone else has said it better, particularly when they've got data to back it up. 

So why post now?

Well, we're still seeing the after-effects.  Facebook posts from people terrified of what may come.  Or Trump supporters offended by exactly those same reactions.  Articles about horrid situations where people are harassed (and at least one where someone made up a story about being harassed, which of course some people will probably use to discredit the rest.)

I had a discussion with my Little this week, from Big Brothers Big Sisters.  A little background here - she's 12 years old.  White.  But most of her friends are black.  Her family is kind of rural, so she listens to country and rap and anything she doesn't consider 'old'.  (She made me listen to that Panda song).  After the election, she casually said that some of her friends were discussing killing themselves.  The way she said it, it didn't sound like she was actually considering it...but what the hell are 12 year old girls doing, talking about killing themselves because Trump got elected?  I don't know if the discussion was tied to the rumor of transgender teens committing suicide after his election.

People are scared. Genuinely worried about what will come.  On the one hand, it seems a little premature.  Trump hasn't even been inaugurated yet.  The hateful incidents that have occurred since the election aren't state sponsored.  It's just horrid people who are emboldened by Trump's win (and by state-sponsored, I don't just mean 'legal law enforcement'.  Regimes like Iran have sometimes used 'volunteers' to enforce behavior.  Sometimes states even pretend that they aren't behind it.)

That doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about, of course.  I think everyone will be keeping a very close eye on how Trump governs.  And will be paying close attention to anything that infringes on basic rights, or suggests rounding people up and putting them in internment camps, or suggests making people wear distinctive symbols.

At the same time - we've got a Republican president, Republican Senate, and Republican House.  If Trump proposes something illegal, will the Republican Congress really stop him?

The problem with writing this post is that I don't know how to do justice to both sides.  In a normal, run-of-the-mill situation, I would say let the Republicans run things.  They'll probably overextend, misread their support, make mistakes, and basically lose soon enough.  (Democrats and Republicans both tend to do this on a regular basis.)

And if it helps persuade people that some ideas don't work (like trickle-down economics), or that other ideas do, then so much the better.  And, of course, I could be wrong about what works and what doesn't...so maybe their proposals will actually work.

Point is, normally we have the time and strength to experiment a bit.  Go down a wrong path for a bit, and in the process prove that it's not going to get us where we want.

Only thing is, that works for policies that don't have the impact I described above.  If it's just a matter of lowering taxes on the rich and deregulating finance, well...we'll survive another financial crisis I suppose.  It'll make all the people who suffered under the Great Recession even more ticked off, and it would definitely create more suffering...but we'll survive.

But what about Muslims?  Or Mexicans?  I have a friend who married a Mexican, they have three children together.  He wrote a heart-breaking post describing some of the situations they've already faced...and she's here legally.  Here's a small excerpt:

The people supporting Trump have probably never had to justify their marriage to a DHS agent.
The people supporting Trump have never had to learn that their niece was crying because she's afraid the next President will deport her (completely legal) aunt.
The people supporting Trump will never have to explain to their children that yes, when people use those racial slurs, they are talking about mommy and they are talking about you.
The people supporting Trump don't know the bone-chilling, panic-attack inducing fear and helplessness that has consumed my family since one of the two major political parties chose as their Presidential candidate a man who has made overtly racist, unconstitutional anti-immigrant policies the cornerstone of his platform.

Can we honestly say that they have nothing to fear? 

Or what about gay marriage?  What if Congress decided to ban gay marriage again, and Trump's Supreme Court nominee ensures it's not declared unconstitutional?

As for me - I don't know what Trump is going to do.  He's been pretty unpredictable throughout the election.  He's contradicted himself and reversed policy positions so many times that I don't think we have any idea what we're truly going to get.

Sidebar - Political Scientist Hat

Someone on Facebook mentioned that Maine passed ranked choice voting.

This is the kind of dull and boring topic that I wish more people found interesting.  Especially if it forced us to consider different structures.

See, the rules we pass affect how politics are played.  Just as the rules in baseball, football and basketball do.  The NFL may decide to change where the line of scrimmage is on an extra point kick.  You're still playing football, but the decisions you make will be different.

Same thing in politics.  Americans have been complaining for years that we don't have a viable third party.  That our choices are often limited to two candidates that we don't really like, and are forced to pick the lesser of two evils.  (voting in the primaries is one way to help change that, but unfortunately the less politically active ones don't do that.)

There are some big systemic reasons why that happens.  Some have to do with the whole 'first past the post'  thing.  You have to have enough support to win, or you get nothing.  Even if you have support from a third of all the voters, if you didn't get the most votes you won't have any representation.  It also means people are afraid to vote their consciences, since a vote for that third party might allow your least favorite candidate to win instead.  (That's what Maine's new law would address.  Vote for your first choice.  Election officials will see if any candidate has a clear majority.  If not, they eliminate the candidate with the least support and assign those votes to their second choice, and so on until there's a candidate with a majority)

This may encourage more people to vote third party, but it still means those third parties have no influence unless they get a majority somewhere.

I personally like mixed member proportional representation, because you vote for your candidate and your preferred party... And the legislature is created to represent the proportion of those votes.  So you get your preferred candidate, AND if 20% of the population votes libertarian, or green, or constitution, or whatever... they also get a seat in the legislature.   It does mean you're more likely to build coalitions, but I think it's a little more clear how much support there is for, say, Christian Conservatives vs.  Libertarians and you don't have one party trying to meet the (sometimes conflicting) needs of both.

Our original rules are one part of this, and I don't think mixed member proportional representation was something anyone had thought of yet when we created the Constitution.  Unfortunately, there's been some changes that make it even more difficult for a viable third party.  (we've had third parties in the past, or rather one party would fall apart and get replaced by another.  The Federalist Party, Whigs, etc.)

Thing is, in their quest to continue winning elections the two major parties have voted in laws that consolidate their holds.  And make it even harder for a third party to win.  Gerrymandering is part of that, of course.  But so are laws that require more signatures to get on the ballot if you're not backed by the existing parties.  Then there's the media, which just doesn't give other parties the visibility and attention needed to get elected.

Our two parties do tend to co-opt issues that start gaining support, so it's not as though they're completely out of touch.  Plus we've got polls (when they ask the right questions and have an accurate method of analyzing the data).

Still, there's a reason the average American gets sick of being presented with choices that only barely match what we want.  (though that collective 'we'  is funny, in that the issue I care about most may not be what someone else cares about.  So we're both unhappy with our choices, but for different reasons)

One of the terms I dislike most come election time is the concept of a mandate.  Just because you won, doesn't mean you have a mandate for your full agenda.  You might have won because we're punishing the current party, or because most of us want decriminalized or legalized marijuana, but maybe we don't actually want to privatize social security.

Of course, given the muddle of a two party system (and the outsized influence of money), it's sort of a guessing game for the winners to figure out which promises to pursue first and hardest.  Sure, there's polling to help sort that out.  And some people may not have a specific preference, other than "Fix it",  but if you guess wrong then at the next election the voters will be voting to punish you.

Or just voting against you because the economy tanked. 

2016 Election

Well, I don't think we'll get the final results soon.  A couple of states are so close it wouldn't surprise me to see a recount. 

I have work tomorrow, so I'm heading to bed.  I'm sure there'll be a ton of updates when I wake up.  I wanted to say, though, that we really need a post election autopsy.  For both parties.  I don't ever want to see another election like this.

And if Hillary loses, I blame the Democratic Party.  No, not wikileaks.  Nor the FBI. 

Enough for now, I need to sleep.