Walz

2024-Oct-28, Monday 11:53 am
mellowtigger: (Default)

I said I was going to write about Walz as a Vice President nominee in this USA election cycle. I'm almost out of time, so here are some thoughts.

Click to read about Tim Walz...

I will describe Walz as "imminently practical". It seems very weird to me that media keeps trying to paint Walz as a progressive of some kind. He's certainly a liberal, but I've never thought of him as progressive. True, a quarter-century ago, he was a high school adviser for a gay-straight alliance for students. The first sentence of this UK news article does a good job describing the nature of Tim Walz: "A straight, football-coaching national guardsman wasn’t the LGBT+ ally that Seth Elliot Meyer expected."

Okay, a quarter-century ago, maybe that was progressive for most places in the USA. Here in Minnesota, though, civics and community are broadly accepted ideas (unlike conservatism in many places), so it wasn't radical progressivism to think that people should be treated equally. Sure, some people learn to behave differently, and Walz had issues at the high school to help un-teach bad habits, so they could maintain that ideal.

Fast forward to recent years with Walz as Governor of Minnesota. Actual progressive voices have been calling for legalization of marijuana for many years. Not Walz. It's only after conservative forces started siphoning votes away from the liberal party by spawning multiple political parties for marijuana legalization that Walz stepped before the microphone to say he would sign legislation if it came to him. Such legislation arrived, and he did sign the proposal into law. He and Democrats acted on this issue ONLY AFTER it became apparent that they were actually losing votes, or might gain new ones. They were not progressive on this issue, they were practical.

As for "the riots"... again, Walz was practical. Conservatives today are trying to criticize him for not immediately sending the military in to crush the people watching the police station burn. (Fyi, it was imported agitators who set the fire. Half of them were white, and none of them were from Minneapolis proper, although some lived nearby. They were named Dylan Shakespeare Robinson, Branden Michael Wolfe, Bryce Michael Williams, and Davon De-Andre Turner, if you want to look up the news stories about them.) We have a little thing called "law" here in Minnesota, and Walz followed it. He can only deploy troops under specific conditions, and our lousy Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey did not provide sufficient specifications for military engagement with the domestic population here. Frey argues it was Walz's fault, but I believe Walz held the proper line, requiring very clear justification and rules of engagement before sending armed troops into a Minnesota city. When he got that clear directive, he sent the troops. Conservatives ought to be glad of such jurisprudence, such hesitation to deploy armed troops against citizenry, with their "Don't Tread On Me" flags. I am unhappy with their hypocrisy on this matter.

I expect Walz would perform similarly as Vice President, tackling tough issues but only with practicality in mind.

mellowtigger: (vote)

Simpsons Kang and Kodos two-party system, "But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system.  You have to vote for one of us."I learned something interesting today about democracy. The first time I mentioned ranked choice voting on this blog was back in 2011 during the Occupy movement. I consider it essential to saving democracy in the USA. I've also alluded to the fact that democratic principles (lowercase "d", not like the Democratic party) are strong in Minnesota. I've even used a phrase like "my kind of crazy" during several elections here when talking about non-mainstream candidates available here for me to vote for. (I did it in 2010, 2021, 2022, and 2023.) It turns out that local Minneapolis mayoral politics make a great example of the principle that "instant runoff voting" can benefit society by encouraging new behavior from our political parties and candidates. There's actually math to support my gut feeling.

One of the channels I watch sometimes on YouTube when I want to learn something is Veritasium: An element of truth. They recently produced the video below, examining the history and mathematical theory behind voting in a democracy. How do you achieve fair results that represent the proverbial "will of the people"? I learned a lot from this piece, and I recommend watching all of this 23-minute video.

I think they didn't spend enough time at the beginning of the video dunking on the current election method in the USA. I find our method distasteful and have urged others to follow me in voting with your conscience instead of as a high school pep rally to support your "team" in perpetual 2-party spiral downward on our collective way to disaster. I'm happy to see Minneapolis represented in this video, since I praise Minnesota society occasionally. I really did find a good home for myself here. The video failed to make any judgment on the severity (I think that's the word I want?) of the voting flaw in democracy. The flaws they offer do seem to me like exceptionally rare cases, when considering elections among huge populations of people. How often would these failure modes actually present themselves? I still advocate ranked choice voting. Unfortunately, our Minnesota state and national positions are still single-choice, winner-takes-all voting instead. My sample ballot shows me that I have nine candidates as options for President in November. I intend to make full use of my options, not succumb to the 2-party mythos as some unofficial "requirement" of my voting participation. I do, therefore, need to learn more about these 9 options. (Okay, just 8 choices, since RFK Jr has already dropped out to endorse Trump.)

Now, however, I need to learn more about this newfangled "rated voting system", since it seems to be even better at avoiding the flaws of democratic voting. I mean, if it was good enough to elect popes (for over 1/4 millennium) and the United Nations' Secretary General, then maybe it's good enough for the rest of us plebeians to use too.

mellowtigger: http://wikiality.wikia.com/Breaking_News#Shocking_News:_Stephen_Colbert_Predicts_The_Future.21 (i told you so)

In a few hours, I begin the hardest week of the year at my job. I expect not to blog for a while. Before I begin that absence, I wanted to share this news story. I'm including a subscriber-share link that should offer free reading to anyone who uses it, so no need to check elsewhere for the full text.

"The reinvention of Kamala Harris" (Washington Post)

It explains everything that I've said before about how different this campaign feels from the one 4 years ago... even though the candidate is still the same person.

I find Walz more interesting, with more substantive history and actions, and I hope to write more about that topic in the coming weeks. He is the right choice for this Democrat ticket, strongly balancing out Harris's weak points.

distress and populism

2024-Aug-19, Monday 06:57 am
mellowtigger: (Not Now Brian)

I've been saying at least since the Occupy movement that people "on the street" are distressed and need help. I've also said that Bernie Sanders (and Elizabeth Warren and Mike Gravel) was a populist answer to this need who appeared on the Democrat ticket for U.S. President. A new large-scale study appears to support my assertion that people want a populist leader during these trying times.

"Feelings of sadness, anger, and despair might hold the key to understanding the rise of populist leaders like Donald Trump in recent years. A large-scale study published in American Psychologist suggests that negative emotions among voters are not only linked to populist attitudes but are also significant predictors of populist voting behavior in major elections. This research, which spans over 150 countries and includes the analysis of more than 2 billion tweets, emphasizes the overlooked role of emotions like sadness and depression in driving the demand for populism."
- https://www.psypost.org/emotional-distress-among-voters-tied-to-trumps-populist-appeal-research-shows/

I also insist that similar reasons lead to the persistent trouble here in north Minneapolis. I woke early Sunday morning (and lost about 1.5 hours of sleep, being unable to return to sleep, even though I don't remember hearing the gunshots) around the time of some gunshots about 5 blocks southeast of my house. News broke later on Sunday that 5 kids received gunfire aimed at them at one of the blocks I travel through on my trips to/from the big Cub grocery store. They were found farther south, in a stolen Kia. They were shot by somebody with a fully automatic weapon. They're just kids, 11-14 years old, but one news report on tv said at least some of them had been arrested previously. I've seen multiple videos like this one of the brazenness of people in their stolen cars. I can't find it now, but I've seen video of actual children in these cars, driving through a red light at an intersection about 2 blocks southwest of me.

I don't know the answer here, but I still insist that the USA is not confronting its deep economic inequality. They say that USA inequality now is worse than during our historical age of robber barons, worse than during the Great Depression. I don't know what is keeping our systems together. I'll leave you with these 20 minutes of Bernie Sanders speaking on the Senate floor just 2 weeks ago.

watching BBC America news

2024-Aug-14, Wednesday 09:13 pm
mellowtigger: (Not Now Brian)

Earlier this evening, while I was eating a meal after work, I saw a segment broadcast by BBC America as they attended a Trump rally. It was interesting. Several of the people talked about issues that I recognize from the last election (and the one before that). They were essentially differently-worded Bernie Sanders talking points, coming from some people wearing MAGA hats.

Again, I insist that Democrats are making a mistake by not offering the electorate a populist candidate. It feels like media is promoting the populist interpretation for the Harris-Walz ticket, but it also feels like a manufacturing consent situation to me. Harris is not a populist or progressive, which was obvious in the last election when she couldn't compete against several candidates who were.

This is the BBC story. Unfortunately, the very short clip they offer online here doesn't show all of what I saw on the live broadcast, so it doesn't justify the Bernie Sanders interpretation that I'm offering here.

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