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“Laugh about it, Shout about it,…

When you’ve got to choose, Every way you look at it, you lose.“(YouTube video)

– by Paul Simon, performed by Simon & Garfunkel, “Mrs. Robinson

It is that most awful time of year in California – election time! :-)

I understand those who leave their phones off the hook. As for us, we have put political fliers on “automatic recycle” or “recycle before reading.” :-)

California is a strange state… but you knew that. :-) We elect a goodly percentage of “maroons” to state/national positions, because they are the only ones on the ballot. Virtually all of the moderates (read “people who actually THINK about issues” rather than “people who jerk their knee about issues”) are GONE before even the primary election.

So, which “evil” do you like? The “career politician” or the “failed-or-successful” (it really doesn’t matter much which :-) ) businessperson, who, after accumulating wealth in the private sector, decided to try for “power” in the political sphere…? Every way you look at it you lose! :-)

In California, we get a “slate” of the candidates of the extreme “Left” or the extreme “Right.” You REALLY DO have to choose, because the choice has really important consequences for such things as the environment. On the other hand, your personal liberties will decrease, regardless of your choice, because that is the nature of power, regardless of who wields it. “We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files….” To the Californians who disagree, I would say, “Live in a couple of other states for awhile to get a broader perspective.”

And then there are the “Propositions!” :-)

If you think that you have heard some “sleazy propositions” :-) in your life, you should see the ones we get on the ballot in California. We often have everything from petrochemical companies to utility companies trying to rob us and/or pollute the natural environment (what little we have left). And then there are the COMPLICATED issues, which pit, for example, a totally untried philosophy of a state handling a certain controlled substance against an historically failed philosophy of the “Feds.” :-) I saw a Halloween “statement” about THAT proposition today that succeeded (and went unpunished because of its ambiguity) – three high school students dressed in Halloween Ghillie suits wearing bandanas and sombreros! They looked like walking “weeds!”

It is such a disillusionment when students reach a certain age and realize that world is run by a collection of folks who range from the “merely neurotic” to the “clearly psychotic.” And we let those folks run the world… chiefly because we have more important things to do with our lives. :-) (Ask a biologist….) (Note added October 30, 2010: Another reason that we allow them to run the world, of course, is that it eats up a lot of their time :-) which, when combined with their natural tendency to exclude other people, means that we don’t have to interact with them very much at all [something like 0-8 hours/day], which improves our lives IMMENSELY! :-) )

I used to wonder (since I have never been a professional psychologist) whether it was just my imagination that a lot of the folks who seek to “run everything” have an obsessive “need” for control. :-) Fortunately, in writing a recent blog entry, I discovered a quote from Abraham Maslow (who WAS a highly distinguished and quite positive psychologist) that makes me feel better about my thinking:

“The neurosis in which the search for safety takes its clearest form is in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis. Compulsive-obsessive to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear.”

I now understand the majority of the California Legislature and a good bit of Congress and other bureaucracies! :-) I am going to assume “merely neurotic” without further evidence. :-) And I have clearly got to read more Maslow…!

On the upside – the skillfully camouflaged propositions and the abandonment of a discussion of issues in favor of “negative campaigning” force a lot of research upon California voters who want to do “the right thing” by understanding the issues.

On the downside – unprepared voters can do a lot of damage (sometimes irreversibly), and confusion may cause a lot of voters to stay home. :-(

I always urge folks, especially children who have a hard time seeing beyond the moment, to NEVER use a permanent solution to solve a temporary problem. For example, never use extinction to “solve” an energy problem. :-) And just because you are ignorant of the complexities of issues does not mean that your opinion of them is the correct one…!

I also urge people to vote, preferably after research. California, the U.S., and the world really need that now.

Please vote.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

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