What can I say? America is full of people who don’t agree with me. Mostly, it looks like they don’t live near me either. If they lived near me they’d see the same problems I do and know what I was talking about when I complained about them. Instead, they complain about the problems where they live, which is some place in outer space.
Ha, I couldn’t resist that. No, really, they don’t live in cities. Blue state, red state, it’s not. It’s local: They’re blue cities and purple suburbs of varying shades, to red outlying areas and red towns.
If you’re a Republican, and you live in the city, don’t bother to contradict my generalization. I know it’s a generalization, we’re just talking about the kind of numbers that makes elections happen the way they do. This last one in particular. The fact is that people in cities, overall, vote differently than people not in cities, overall — and the reason is plainly that they have different interests, overall.
If everyone in the world lived exactly the same way I do, I’m sure we’d all agree on what should be done about all of our commonly shared difficulties. We’d still fight over who has to take out the trash, but at least we’d agree it needed taking out.
This is why I’ve always favored a return to the ancient city-state system. It’s just a simple application of the principle of democratic rule. They who have the most demos gets the most rule. So I say cities should raise their own armies to conquer and subjugate neighboring towns and farmlands, form loose federations when it suits them and wage war upon their rival cities when that suits them. As I envision it, it would be similar to the NFL, but with less shouting, less cannon fire and fewer head injuries.
That will not happen, not because it wouldn’t be worthwhile, not because it couldn’t happen, but because it is completely unnecessary. The system we have, for all its flaws, eventually favors larger numbers of people. We’ve seen that repeatedly. If you are inclined to disagree, take a minute to smoke some weed with your lesbian wife before getting back to me on that. Take deep tokes.
Cities are growing, and the demographics of America favor blue precincts. It’s only a matter of time before the populations of blue precincts outnumbers those of red. When that happens there will be a rethinking of the winner-take-all, slash-and-burn philosophy of politics epitomized by my city-state fantasy, and there will be a call for playing nice with the minority red precincters. I’m sure we won’t actually enslave them.
For these reasons, and these reasons only, I have resisted the urge to write a screaming rant today, and I will not say what I think of the majority of the American electorate. I will not waste a lot of space telling you about the number of people I encountered after the election was over, who did not realize it had taken place. I will not pour wrath out upon those who have bragged post-election that they are not the problem on the grounds that they didn’t vote.
OK, maybe I will pour a little wrath on their tiny, putrid, empty skulls. There.
Techniques to move on, in spite of the snakes in the way:
“Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?” I think we’ve all felt that way at one time or other. Here are a couple of methods I use to get by.
Remember they don’t have to be your snakes. Use the power of positive thinking. Make them someone else’s snakes. It’s not that hard. Pick them up by the end that doesn’t have the teeth and fling them at someone.
If you’re still stuck with too many snakes remember that they taste like chicken, and the more there are, the more there are to go around.
If we all keep our heads we’ll get through this together.