09 November 2016

Surviving on the Dollar Menu

The dollar menu at McZorgle's never has tasty, nutritious menu choices. And when you force people to choose from only what is on the dollar menu, it's really difficult to predict their choices. Predicting the result — hypertension from excess salt, the occasional disease outbreak from improper handling, weight gain from poor nutrition profile — is much easier...

To put things another way, those who have skeletons in their closets need to avoid basing their electoral (or other selection... such as marketing) strategy on exposing the skeletons in the other candidates' closets. In particular, this means that gatekeepers themselves need to be not necessarily above reproach, but at least relatively clean. In this election, that goes for all four parties that made national ballots for the presidency; my own ballot1 involved choosing the least of the evils offered from among Chicken McMaggots, sleazeburgers, spraypainted-green side "salads," and similarly unappetizing choices. It also applies to the entertainment industry — if the gatekeepers for, say, "popular music" were both more competent and more honorable, both their suppliers and customers would be less restive.

Of course, the gatekeepers aren't going to blame themselves. They're not going to get out of the way and let others set the menu — they're just going to tweak things by providing a new dipping sauce for the McMaggots or adding sesame seeds to the bun of the sleazeburger. And that's because it's not in the personal, immediate, unenlightened self-interest of the individuals who act as gatekeepers to take any risk of diminishing their own personal power bases. This nation survived — in consecutive terms — Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. It was unpleasant (and racist, isolationist, antiimmigrant, and "pro-business" meaning "pro-fraud") but survivable. More recently, Italy survived Berlusconi. Times are a bit more dangerous now (a Trump presidency absolutely ensures we will not meet the climate-change challenge, instead of providing the 30% or so chance of doing so offered by two of his competitors), so survival will be dicier.


  1. For exit pollsters, et al.: What part of "secret ballot" did you not understand? With no even arguably liberal-and-sane candidate to choose from...