Gun Control

If anything, I was surprised that it took as long as it did for the gun control people to decide they were going picket NRA meetings whilst packing heat.

I mean, if a legal right is truly protected, it’s protected for the people who think it’s bugshit insane just as much as it is for the people who support it, so there’s never been anything actually stopping anti-gun protestors arriving where the National Rifle Association was hosting its big annual convention with AK47s slung over their shoulders and signs reading “Why am I allowed to do this?” or “Surely this can’t possibly make any of you feel any safer!”

The news networks had a lot of fun with the story, it’s a fun story to cover, and the anchors bordered on gleeful as they reported the heavily armed people protesting the fact that they were allowed to be quite so heavily armed. Watching from home, even I had to admit that the whole thing was at minimum faintly amusing.

I kept watching the coverage, at the very least, for most of the afternoon, giggling offhandedly to myself at the irony of the juxtaposition.

Until the NRA people came out to remind the protestors that they, too, had brought guns.

Nobody’s entirely sure who fired the first shot...

Anyway, dozens were killed and steps are being taken as we speak to make sure that similar tragedies are, in the future, prevented happening ever again.

The steps, I have no doubt, will include even more guns for even more people.

That ought to work…

What I Want 2016

I have to admit, Trump’s been crushing it as far as pretending to campaign for president goes.

I mean, every new thing out of his mouth has been crazy, inappropriate, racist or all three, and I’ve been eating it up with a childlike sense of hope and wonder. I could not ask for a better piece of entertainment product, and while I don’t know what we did to deserve this, I’m wiling to go with the flow, lean back, and watch an angry clown pretend to run for president without thinking about it too hard.

After all, his candidacy is the sort of thing that really does start to fall apart if any level of scrutiny is applied to it.

If you’re a Trump supporter, I apologize, but that’s the level on which I’m choosing to enjoy this whole thing. It’s a shallow level, but that doesn’t make my joy that he’s running any less real. And isn’t it more important that we ARE enjoying the same thing than petty questions of why?

Ultimately, I don’t think Trump will take the Republican nomination, because the people who own the party choose how it’s run, not the voters, and the owners know that Trump is too much of a wild-card to allow as their standard bearer during a major election they think that they might actually win. Which is unfortunate, but nothing can be done about it, that’s just how the process works. A safer choice will be made and the whole US election program will become a much less interesting one.

Which is what it is, though I DO believe that with a little luck, and sufficiently passionate supporters, Trump CAN make himself an important enough part of the conservative conversation that, when the time comes to choose a vice presidential nominee, he will be legitimately considered and, though this is not likely, perhaps even chosen. With the sheer number of people running, after all, the party will be splintered, and a moderate, business-friendly candidate might need a good way to reach out to the more conspiracy-minded base. Stranger things have happened, after all…

That would be a lot of fun.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is running basically unopposed and the whole primary can safely be ignored until the national convention.

If you’re a Sanders supporter, I apologize, but you had to know on some level that this was the case. As I pointed out earlier, the people who own the party choose how it’s run, not you. Sanders is moving the Overton window further left than I’d have thought possible, and congratulations to him, but you’re going to have to take that win and be happy with it.

It’s not a bad win, after all.

Once she has the nomination officially nailed down, however, things begin to become interesting. Because the sitting vice-president, who at one point did have a slim but non-zero chance of mounting a legitimate challenge had he entered the race, chose not to do so, keeping Clinton’s path to the presidency clear for her. And presumably, while it’s unlikely any actual quid-pro-quo situation has been negotiated, he would appreciate something in return.

Due to this, as well as the fact that, technically, there is no legal reason the same man can’t be the vice president under two different presidents over the course of sixteen years, there’s a small but non-zero possibility that Jolting Joe Biden is tapped to, once more, run in the VP slot. The Republican nominee picks Trump, Clinton picks Biden, and NOW the decks are cleared for a Donald Trump/Joe Biden vice presidential debate.

I want this so much, you guys, I can’t even say. People forget because the Obama administration has done a pretty good job keeping him on a short leash, but Joe Biden has basically zero internal censor, in a way that’s frequently unbelievably entertaining. His debate against Paul Ryan was one of the highlights of 2012, not the presidential campaign, the year, it was one of my favorite things that happened that year, and his tendency to go off script, contradict the official white house position on major social issues or drop a random F-bomb makes watching him do things while camera’s are pointed at him a fascinating prospect even when nothing goes off the rails. Even when he’s well behaved, there’s a sense of anticipation in the air!

And, partnered with somebody like Trump who CLEARLY has zero interest in such petty things as “Facts” or “Research” and who genuinely believes he can speak authoritatively on any subject, Biden off the leash could really go to town, unleashing his own unrestrained id with a willing, if much dumber, sparring partner.

It would be a debate for the ages. For all the wrong reasons, obviously, but for the ages nonetheless, and I want to watch it happen SO MUCH!

Alternately, Comedy Central could host the “Parallel Universe” Trump/Biden presidential debates. I’d watch that too.

But let’s be honest, part of the sick thrill is the danger of this taking place in real life, with actual policy decisions in the balance. Staged for the purposes of a show, much though Trump’s candidacy IS staged for the purposes of a show, I don’t know that it would have the same impact…

...on democracy.

When the revolution comes, you’ll be first against the wall.

Except that the revolution has already come.

And fewer people were thrown against walls than I’d expected might be…

The economy has yet to collapse, nothing I can see from where I’m sitting is on fire, locusts have not, in spite of the warnings, descended to blight our crops. Currency has not fled, and I suspect that threats from CEOs to defund the Children’s Hospital out of spite were empty ones. Nobody wants that kind of publicity, after all.

We had an election, not a coup, and transformed ourselves from theoretical to practicing democracy, electing a moderate left-of-center party we hope will enact modest economic reform. In time, I have no doubt disappointment will come with portions of what they do, but in the meantime I’m profoundly proud of us for sending a strong message to all who would govern us.

We have our pride.

We have our Orange Crush.

Treat us with open contempt, and the good people of Alberta will only stand for it for forty-four years, and not one moment longer.

And now, in a way that living in Alberta I’m not exactly used to, I’m cautiously optimistic about the future…

My career in politics was not a long one...

You misunderstand, I know what our problems are AND I know how to fix them.

Everyone knows about the challenges we face, and in general they’re all solvable, with a little effort and a little shared sacrifice. It’s not a complex matter to get us back up and running. Wouldn’t take long either.

It’s just that I have absolutely no intention of doing any of the required things.

Because I don’t care. I don’t care because “our” problems aren’t OUR problems.

They’re yours. Or, more precisely, they’re your children’s.

I have no children of my own, so long term deficits don’t matter to me. Neither does global warming, the state of the education system or providing for the comfort of retirees fifty years from now. By fifty years from now I’ll be dead, and no generation will succeed me specifically, so from my point of view it’ll be a totally irrelevant point.

Why, then, plan for a future that neither my nonexistent offspring nor I will be around to enjoy? It’s somebody else’s problem, so let somebody else deal with it. My time, I think, would be better spent dealing with the problems of the present without the distraction of what tomorrow might bring.

To that end, I would like to suggest massive increases in spending, both economically stimulative and social, and an abolition of all forms of taxes effective immediately. This will provide for short-term economic growth, which, as I’ve already implied, is the only sort of economic growth I give a damn about. Similarly, I’d like to suggest the immediate abolition of regulation on our nation’s businesses, as the majority of regulation is meant to deal with the consequences of our actions, either for other people today or for future generations, while I’m more interested in the actions themselves.

I am, after all, a man of action. Consequences can be left for other days and weaker-willed men.

If elected, I promise that I will do what I can to help myself, today. And those of you who are in situations similar to mine will also benefit, if only peripherally. This is my promise to you and, if elected, I will keep this promise.

And as to those of you who’s circumstance is different from mine, or who do care about the future, let me say this: I do not, and will never care about your problems. Because they are not my problems, and I have absolutely no empathy for anyone different than myself.

Vote for me anyway.

My opponent feels the exact same way as I do, after all, and will behave in the exact same way once safely in office.

And I at least have enough respect for your intelligence to be honest and up front about it.

Status

This status is to raise awareness. Specifically, awareness of my awareness. It tells you I care about social justice, and am politically aware, and does so in the most efficient possible way.

The most efficient way being the way in which I don’t have to actually do anything.

I won’t give time, I won’t give money. I’ll change my Facebook to reflect a contemporary social issue, and it’s unreasonable to expect me to do more.

Copy this to your Facebook if you believe things, but not strongly enough to come up with unique phrasing.

And thus: Increase your Facebook status.

Election

After the convention, the party got a little out of hand. Like, a lot out of hand.

Like, the next morning the newly selected candidate for President woke up naked, drenched in blood, next to a dead prostitute out of hand.

Like, a dead male prostitute out of hand.

Still, great party.

Anyway, he refused to step down as candidate, claiming the American people had chosen him because he was the only man who could lead the country out of crisis, and even when his bloodwork came back positive for meth he was convinced that he’d prevail in the general election.

The media coverage was a circus by the end of the first week, and as the election season wore on it only became worse and worse for him.

At first, he did what he could to combat the constant, intensely negative press he was receiving. He sent surrogates to fight for his reputation on the news and chat programs even as he sent lawyers to fight to keep him out of prison until after the election.

But when he was caught on tape saying “After I’m elected, I can just pardon myself. The President IS the law.” The surrogates willing to go on record as still supporting him kind of dried up.

And when it became known that he was siphoning campaign funds to pay his legal team, the donations dried up too.

By mid-October, people had more or less forgotten that there even were two people running for President. Which is probably bad for democracy.

Still, coming to politics as I did from Princeton’s Sociology department, I couldn’t help loving the spectacle.

There is, after all, a certain percentage of people who will always vote for their party’s candidate, regardless of that candidates identity.

And come November, we’ll finally know exactly what percentage that is.

Cryogenics

You misunderstand. I wasn’t dying.

I had no horrible, incurable disease, and there was certainly no tearful conversation with my physician about how this one, desperate act was my only chance of survival. My health was, overall, quite good.

Not great, mind. I smoked too much, drank too much and had no doubts that these things were taking their toll on me. But good at least. At the time of my cryogenic freezing, I was in perfectly acceptable health. Although, if medical breakthroughs have since been made that might improve my body in significant ways, that’d be a conversation I’d be happy to have. However, it’s not why I froze myself.

To understand that, you have to understand something about my psychology and, perhaps more importantly, about the early twenty-first century. You see, at the time, a sort of malaise had fallen over the industrialized world, and the prevailing attitude, culturally and politically, was that humankind’s best days were behind it. An ugly school of thought had developed in the last years of the previous century whereby it was suggested that humans, as a species, had no great accomplishments left ahead of them. The logic followed that, without great things for a society to strive for, there was no need for it to exist, and we could go back to an every man for himself sort of existence where we looked out for our own insulated group and let the rest of the world go to hell. The money raised by the Earth’s governments, it was suggested, should be returned in the form of tax credits and we, who once collectively comprised mighty nations, should go our separate ways. But it wasn’t just governments, private companies were suggesting there was no middle class left worth marketing products toward, a generation thought they’d grow up worse off than their parents, half the world seemed to think the Rapture was coming and the other that Global Warming would kill us all. I put up with this as long as I could, but when NASA announced that it would be mounting no further manned space flights I could no longer push through.

Even NASA? Even NASA? No, I couldn’t bear the thought.

Which brings us in a roundabout way to the thing you have to understand about my psychology. Well, two things really. The first is that I believed, truly and fully, in the power of individuals to come together and solve our collective problems collectively, and I believed that, with enough minds working together, there was nothing that couldn’t be resolved. An opinion that left me quite out of step with my times as the people around me surrendered to what they felt they were powerless to change. However; the other thing you need to know about me is that, in spite of the contempt I felt for my contemporaries, I was, am and will always remain at my core an optimistic futurist. Humankind can triumph through our will and our wits, and given enough time I know in my heart we always will. So while I was dejected at the persons I saw on the television night after night attempting to gently usher my species into it’s retirement, I had the greatest of faith in people.

“We may,” I thought, “think we’re done now, but we’re not, and it’s only a matter of time before we figure that out.”

However, time wasn’t something I had in indefinite amount of, and no large-scale coming together of the peoples of all nations seemed on the immediate horizon. I am, as I said, acceptably healthy, but I do drink, I do smoke and my family is prone to sudden unexpected illnesses. Humanity would persevere, to be sure, but there was no guarantee I’d be around to see it.

And I would so hate to miss it.

So when the university put out an add looking for test subjects for a cryogenics project, it seemed just the thing!

The doctors in charge walked me through their lab, showing me the chamber they intended to freeze their subjects in and the apparatus they’d be using to monitor the suspended body. Once the process was deemed safe, they commented, only the richest people in the world would be able to afford it, but until then it was up to people like me to risk their lives as the bugs were hammered out of the process. This frequently tended to be the case back then. Oh, they were mainly just attempting two or three day freezes at the time, but it didn’t take much to convince them I was dying of something with an imposingly long Latin name, and therefore the perfect test subject for a longer term freeze. Put me in for two hundred years, I argued, and any side effects the mega-wealthy users of this new technology might experience will have years worth of notice via the observation of my own case.

It wasn’t an airtight lie, but come on. Science classes were teaching young-earth creationism in some areas of the country, you couldn’t expect much of their graduate students.

So they performed their tests, a friend of mine in the medical faculty faked a write-up of my fictitious disease, and they put me under. And for two hundred years I’ve been sleeping, not waiting for a cure for my own body but, as I said, attempting to outlast my era, waiting for human civilization to find cures for it’s own ails. And while I freely admit sticking around and trying to personally make the world a better place would have been the braver, better option, I couldn’t live with the thought that I might not see that better world when it finally came.

After spending more than thirty years loving the idea of tomorrow, I had to meet it in person, if only to find out if my optimism was well-placed.

So in answer to your question, no. No, I don’t think I will need counseling to help me come to terms with the fact that I’m alone in a strange new future. I’m reasonably certain I’m going to find the strange new future awesome, and if not I’ll freeze myself back up and try again in another two hundred years.

So, tell me, with the time I’ve been gone from the world, what have we done? Go ahead, impress me…

Dead Hookers

Admittedly, three days before an election isn’t the time to be caught killing a hooker.

Still, life happens, detectives burst in and dead woman drape across beds.

His lawyers had him released immediately, but the damage was done. The press was having a field day.

So there was nothing else to do.

Lights bore down during that first press conference post “incident”, and he felt the reporters’ eyes deconstructing him. But he stood his ground, this was his only chance to seize the narrative. He braced himself, and spoke.

“You can see,” he began, “how tough I am on crime…”

Protest

They were tired of being taken for granted. The time had come for action.

But when they protested in Washington, they were ignored. The press didn’t show, and congress was unmoved.

Their second protest, inside congress, was the same. When security removed them, they didn’t scream, or fight back, for that was not their way.

Their concerns went unaddressed.

Their third protest was at 4am, in the bedrooms of the congresspersons. Each awoke to find a protestor, dressed in black, looming over their bed, carrying a sign reading “Non-violent protest. This time.”

And so the Ninja Rights act was passed.