Hiatus, mostly result of astonishment. It’s taken this long to figure out what happened in November 2016. The Electoral College is supposed to exist for one reason only: to put a very important decision in the hands of people who are more involved in the political process than your average snapstagram feeder.
The fear of the Founders and Framers was that direct executive election could open the door to a huckster concentrating on only a few of the 13 original States: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Thus the will of the majority of the States could be subverted. So they designed the Electoral College, to crutch on the fact that every state has 2 Senators, and thus at least 3 members of Congress, so 3 Electoral votes.
The theory behind this says that natural cultural variations between the Various States would lessen the chance that the whole republic could be duped by one faction at the same time. And the founders tried to reinforce this regional approach to the republic by giving tiny Delaware and Rhode Island equal representation. That was a good solution 230 years ago. But now the Electoral College has proved its worth, and technology has caught up to the goal of counting every citizen’s vote quickly, nationally rather than regionally. 230 years ago, things moved as fast as a horse.
The last gulp of the Reagan Republican Inversion from north to south finally took place in 2010, with a Tea Party midterm just as Census results came in. A Gerrymander here, reduce polling stations there, and now you have a Red Wall. But now it’s a Wall built on controlling local politics to manipulate voting patterns, not on the somewhat more natural political theories, like tailoring the local message to the local demographics.
The Red Wall couldn’t stand against African-American turnout in 2012, on a key-state level, but golldurned if it didn’t entrench a wider base in statehouses and state mansions. The Blue Wall had been built by Big Labor, but that’s inexorably hollowed out by the Rust Belt over the decades. So we’ve got this now. 20 months in, and it’s a verified circus.
The problem isn’t nutty conspiracy theories becoming public policy, it’s the ADHD in the middle. Buoyed by a decades-long procession of listeners, after some decades of frustration about never being taken seriously. The most-recent F2F with a person becomes the current truth, but it only lasts until another agreeable person drops by to talk. After a while, supplicants keen onto the fact that sensationalizing brings results. Root of all nepotism is paranoia, sometimes a difficult combination with Oh look, there’s a spider monkey riding a sheep, haw!
Look, if you want to make America a better place, volunteer time to projects that educate African-American women. That’s really the bottom line. Women hold the power in African-American families now, and the smarter they are, the better they can wield that power. But if your vision is broader, then the best thing you can do for the whole of humanity, is to work for educating women in Africa itself.
The whole complement of African-descended women has been ill-served by humankind as a whole, starting with stealing their men for a few centuries, on to colonial repression, then on through another century of laws designed to keep African families unstable whether in Africa or abroad.
Actually, there are already people doing that work, and more would like to, they just don’t have the money to put everyone to work who wants to work, for the education of women in Africa. If you got a job or a family or a caregiver situation that prevents you from going to Africa and helping to educate women, you can still give money to people who are doing that work.
In a broad sense, education of women in sub-Saharan Africa is the fulcrum upon which rests the future history of the 2000’s century. Yes, the military history is shaping up to be Asia versus Europe and the Americas, again, but that will be decided by the resources of Africa if it’s a cold war, or by the geography of Africa if it’s a hot war.
One thing to consider: if you fight a war for small reasons, then even if you win your war, your world is the same small place. The only way to make your own world larger is to line up behind a larger reason. Educating African women, whether diasporated or not, is the second-last step in lifting all of humanity up the next rung.