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Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

Election 2016, Part 2: Electoral College

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In the last entry, I explained clearly how Trump won. The following rounds of consciousness-streaming offer a crystal ball — like early images of Pluto, fuzzy on details but increasingly apparent on overall features — coming into focus on where we go from here. Some topical highlights will be posted in segments, starting with the Electoral College…

Trump won the presumed Electoral College delegation. Hillary appears to have won the popular vote by a narrow margin (count still not final). [How many of those votes were illegal, whether from dead people, fake identities, or non-citizens, likely never will be known.]

In younger and more naive times, I favored the popular vote as the truest vote, and dismantling of the Electoral College via Constitutional Amendment. As with my youthful dalliances in liberalism, that faded as I gave these issues deeper thought than that found on emotional levels, and in doing so, grew up.

It still will take a necessarily and wonderfully difficult process of amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College. Good luck with that. As this video marvelously explains, the Electoral College was enshrined into your Constitution brilliantly to avoid precisely what a lot of liberals want to prevent: the tyranny of an impulsive majority and the dominance of high-population states’ favorite sons at the expense of more rural areas.

Another video from the same online educators explains the “national popular votes” movement, its Constitutional deceptions, and bad unintended consequences. In short: Be careful for what you ask, lest you get it! What if half of just New York’s and California’s electors had gone Republican? You know the Red States aren’t going to go for any Electoral College changes anytime soon. If only Blue States do, it’s left-wing self-sabotage. Go ahead, shortsighted fools, bring that on. Please!

As Tara Ross notes in those videos, advocates of basing state electors on national popular votes think they are wiser than every generation that preceded them, including the Founders themselves. They suffer from a massive logical fallacy known as “recency bias”. Of course, many of these advocates also voted for either Hillary or Trump, which calls that alleged wisdom into question.

In the next part, to be posted soon, I shall warn of the risks to conservatism.

What Is Predictable and Certain from This Election

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After the election, prepare for all manner of smug condescension, over-representation of results, and generally bad sportsmanship. Regardless of the outcome of the election, the cocky and demeaning behavior from the supporters of the “winner” will be vividly evident, based on what I’ve seen from the liberals after the 2008-12 Obama wins and the ongoing WWE-style bluster of the Trump camp. Either side can lose sight of reason and spout forth their childish taunts from that pox, that all-too-poorly regulated weakness of human nature which affects politics and science alike: emotion.

I’m not going to call Trump “right wing” because he’s not conservative–more of a populist demagogue with a pro-wrestling/reality-TV appeal and almost no coherent, consistent positions; whereas the Clintons are decidedly power-mad corporate leftists and diabolically corrupt to the core. For the quotes below I shall label two groups, with brutally honest shamelessness; take it, or leave it. I refer to her most ardent online supporters as “moneyed left-wing” and his as “Trump foamers”. Whether or not verbatim, in effect the message from the winning side will be:

Trump foamers: “F*** you, losers! Just, f*** you! Losers, losers, losers, losers, losers! Big mandate we got, baby! Huge. This is bigtime and bad-ass. We’re making America great again and taking our country back, you sorry-ass loser weakling wimp p***ies! We told you we’re taking America back and we did. Take your ivory tower liberal bulls**t and shove it up your ass. Lock her up! Lock her up!”

Moneyed left-wing: “Look at this overwhelming mandate we have [with the second most unpopular candidate in history]! F*** you. Just f*** you. You lost yet again. You and your ideas are outdated, your whole demographic is obsolete and useless, and you will be meaningless forever. You just don’t matter anymore. Don’t bother ever speaking or voting again. You’re outnumbered and irrelevant as voters and humans. We’re building our Utopia of tolerance and inclusivity with or without you, and you are all just obnoxious, racist, sexist pests. Please, just die already so we can move forward. Go crawl in a coffin and die.”

Brace yourself. The pettiness, immaturity, divisiveness, rancor, and emotional petulance are not going away.

Scattershooting 160806

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Scattershooting while wondering why so many Cowboys players injure hamstrings, year after year…

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If you are not a Facebook friend, you must know me already, or come with a sterling recommendation from someone who does. My confidence and trust matter. That’s who I am, and how I roll. For those who already are, you’ll notice that I do not take any of these silly and pointless “challenges”–even if I agree with the sentiment behind them. Just not a herd-mentality fad follower–I blaze my own trails, think independently, and don’t tolerate silly and pointless gimmicks.

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This election is (should be) foremost about the Supreme Court vacancies. This is why I am voting for the most constitutionalist candidate–not Trump or Hillary, either of whom would trample the Constitution in his or her own terrifying ways. We need justices who will apply the literal words of the Constitution exactly as written, not “interpret” it to fit pop-fad cultural and political whims. Given the low odds that the imperfect but much more palatable ticket to which I have defaulted (Johnson/Weld) will get enough electoral votes, I see no realistic way out of a destructively leftist Supreme Court now that Trump is sabotaging the election in Hillary’s favor. We are so screwed as a nation and society if either the Clintons or Trump reach the Oval Office. Given that Trump acts as if he doesn’t even want it, the election is Hillary’s to lose.

As for those who would overlook the horrendous things they’ve done and said, and vote for Hillary or Trump anyway, thereby pushing the corrupt and revolting prospect of a Clinton or Trump presidency upon us all, to the potentially grave detriment of America? A wise sage, wiser than any of us, once said the following: Forgive them, for they know not what they do. I will try hard to obey that, and forgive those I know who are Trump or Hillary voters…not saying it will be easy.

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Based on what I have read about the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and NBC’s commercial-infested coverage thereof, I am glad not to have watched. Whatever I was doing (probably sleeping), it was time better spent. All I saw in social-media feeds from friends and associates either was complaints about it, or a few folks cheerleading for sideshow stuff and sociopolitical propagandizing having nothing to do with sports. At its core, the Olympics are supposed to be about sports, not issues and agendas. I missed nothing worth watching.

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Yes, I don’t care for ceremonies as a whole anyway–pure artifice, pandering to emotion. Screw the glitz and glamor–just go straight to the actual competitions. That’s the fun stuff, the substance; let the appreciators of vanity and shallowness enjoy the style. [Similarly, I don’t watch Super Bowl pre-games or halftime shows either. Hell, I didn’t even go to my own college graduation ceremony–pointless waste of time and money when I was getting my diploma regardless.] I’ll go to someone else’s ceremony if it matters a lot to them that I be there for “support” or whatever, but artifice in general just isn’t my cup o’tea.

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On a somewhat related note, I find abiding joy not in earthly culture or artifice or societal whim or others’ impressions and expectations, but in higher purposes. How timely it was then, that a friend posted the following verse, Colossians 3: 1-2.

    Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.