The Incredulous Elections of 2016 and the True Political Issue

I've recently caught up with the state of American politics, and have been both horrified and amused.  Yes of course, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton are all despicable, worthless frauds.  But the circus that they're circling around and the media coverage of it is far worse, as it has obscured the most important political issue.

And that is The Environment, or more specifically, our destruction of The Environment and how we might curtail its destruction so that our grandchildren may actually live on this planet.

I'm not going to debate "global warming" here. We have more evidence that "global warming" is real and that is caused by human activity than we have evidence for the fact that the Earth rotates around the Sun.  (If you reject this claim, go look for the edge on the flat earth and/or pray to your deity of choice)

I love life.  I love the cosmic miracle that our existence is a one in a billion trillion chance - that we happened to have won a cosmic lottery where we intelligent humans came about on this pale blue dot of a planet.  

And I hate the fact that we are blackening this pale blue dot we live on.  All evidence suggests that our current methods of energy consumption will not only run out, but will poison our planet to the point of extinction; microbes may not even survive.

In other words, our current state of existence will result in us drowning in our polar ice caps if we are lucky; and if we are not lucky, we will die of suffocation because our environmental air will be so polluted as to not sustain life.

This is an extremely prescient political issue.  

So, where is the candidate who advocates our survival by drastic environmental reform?

The Dumbing Down of the Population and the "No Child Left Behind" Act

One of first things that George W. Bush did when we became President in 2001 was to pass the No Child Left Behind Act.  This was generally well-received. On the surface, it makes sense: it requires that schools must have certain scores on standardized tests in order to receive federal funding.

However, it had a fairly robust effect upon the quality education in our society.

... to be continued

Why I'm voting for Bernie Sanders: II

I am utterly amazed by the level of thought that goes into our current political discourse... not because of anything amazing or discursive, but because it seems to come from apes that don't have long term memory...  

Donald Trump, a mutant Bush Brother, a foreigner (Ted Cruz), Hillary Clinton and a *socialist* are the main candidates for president?  My God! Wake up people!  

So let's be auspicious and make coarse binary assumptions about the world... On the one hand, you have American Conservatism, represented by the past, present, and future Republican candidates... And on the other, American Liberalism... 

So let's take a look at the history of our adult lives (assuming you are under the age of 50)... 

George W. Bush - a conservative/Republican - came in to power because some idiots in Florida voted for Ralph Nader... he did some shit (9/11 was a total accident... yeah right)... he did some more shit, and left the country in the Great Recession.   

Barack Hussein Osama - or as the media like to call him, "Barack Obama" -  a liberal/Democrat - took over and now we're in an economic boom.

And yet people are still considering the conservative/Republican perspective?  People are throwing their support behind Donald Trump??

There are only three possible hypotheses that explain the phenomena described above...

1) We Humans are utterly stupid.

2) We Humans have been made stupid; we've been repressed of our greater intellectual capacity - accidentally or purposefully - by a force that requires we be stupid.

2a) The force that requires we be stupid are the economic elite. 

3) I live in an utter dream world, and Donald Trump is logical.  

...

Much of *my discourse* above is tongue-in-cheek - but all of its message is genuine.  

I am very stupid, however I think that (2a) is the root of it all...

And therefore I am voting for Bernie Sanders for President.  

Why I'm voting for Bernie Sanders

I'm voting for Bernie Sanders because his agenda is for true democracy, and against the faux democracy of our current political situation:

Hypothesis: People who are very rich (and powerful) want to continue being very rich (and powerful).

This isn't a radical claim; it seems natural to me. Regardless, let's entertain the possible validity of this hypothesis...

Money is required for political power in our current system of government/organization. To be democratically elected into office, elaborate marketing/advertising campaigns must be executed. Elaborate marketing/advertising campaigns are most easily executed with money; it's not an accident that almost every single President of our nation (USA) has come from wealth, and the two or three who didn't were heavily funded by wealthy people.

How do very rich (and powerful) people ensure that they will continue being rich (and powerful)? They advocate public policy (via laws and government actions) that ensure the continuance and growth of their wealth and power.

Consider what you know about human nature. What is the average human being like? If we assume that the group of very rich people who are in political power are like everyone else, then it's safe to assume that they're not magically selfless or altruistic. It's safe to assume that they're not the benevolent provider of our rights - that they don't act in order to ensure that we ordinary people have life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, due process, and other apparent benefits of democracy. Why would they care about that when they're too busy enacting public policy to ensure and enhance their wealth and power? (I won't even go into Bush/Cheney at this point... connect the dots...)

For all intents and purposes, a relatively small group of powerful people (who are powerful for no other reason that they're wealthy) are "pulling the strings" of government, thereby compromising our democracy.

Bernie Sander is not one of these elite, rich and powerful people who have been writing our laws.

Therefore, I support his candidacy for President of the United States of America, fully and unequivocally.

Why is no one bothered that Ted Cruz was born in Canada?

Ted Cruz was born in December of 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The country of one's birth was an important and contentious topic a few years ago. President Obama faced ferocious claims and opposition over the supposition that he was born in Kenya. There was a mad debate about his legitimacy over a birth certificate. People espoused the rationale that a foreign national was unfit to be President. Ted Cruz is a foreign national, yet this hypothesis goes untested against him. The question I therefore ask is how do we respond to this hypocrisy in a creative way that condemns no one and benefits everyone?