Hurray, America proved it’s not a nation of complete morons after all.
About half the nation voted against their interests, unless half of America is consisted of male white millionaires, but America’s completely broken Electoral College allowed Obama to convert that into a pretty convincing victory.
Which is fantastic because I had a tenner riding on the guy.
So tonight Americans decide who the most powerful person on the planet will be for the next four years.
Yes it’s the presidential elections, that broken undemocratic system where those citizens of the few swing states who turned out and didn’t vote for some no hope third candidate decide the fate of the most powerful nation on earth.
In case you don’t know, I’m not particularly keen on Americans. The combination of an obscenely large military and what seems to be a wilfully ignorant populace do not inspire confidence, but maybe this time America will prove me wrong as they did four years ago.
I hope they do, I hope I don’t see a return under Romney of the America I despised, rather than an America I merely resent as under Obama.
Because let me be frank here, the prospect of Romney winning scares me. Romney himself doesn’t, oh no, over-privileged corporate puppet he’s merely repulsive, but the Republican Party that pulls his strings, that scares me. Anti-science whether it be evolution or climate change, coupled with an almost fetishistic love for religion makes them open to the worst demands of their rabid base. This is the party that ums and ahs over whether the rapist is the one to condemn, who have trouble noticing that women exist because they’re so concerned with the wellbeing of zygotes. A party that thinks blacks will vote whichever way their pastor tells them because they don’t think for themselves like white Republicans, that decriminalising homosexuality was a mistake and that allowing people to marry who they love will tear American families apart (which now I think about it probably says a fair bit about Republican families).
I can’t believe I’m relying on you, but please America, don’t fuck this one up.
Jesus Non-existent Christ, I seem to have a habit of leaving this blog alone for stupidly long stretches. Ah well, let’s see if I can get caught up in one simple post.
The Guardian has a completely (from what I’ve seen) worthless series on ‘Evil’. I’ve only read the first installment and that’s all I will read, because as far as I can see it’s a totally vacuous piece of nonsense presenting itself as religiously balanced and even handed while in fact steeped in Christianity right up to the eyeballs. The first in the series, aside from misattributing Epicurus’ Dilemma to Hume, is saturated in the masochistic Christian idea that to consider ‘evil’, a nebulous term the author doesn’t even attempt to nail down, is to contemplate “a darkness in all our hearts”. The simplistic idea that extends the fact that, as humans, we are capable both of extraordinary kindness and extraordinary cruelty and individualises it down to the little angle and the little demon sitting on your shoulders. I don’t have time for it.
The UK is going to elect Police and Crime Commissioners (a new non-job) on November 15th. Something that I’m sure a lot of people here would be rather surprised about given the amount of fuss being made about it (i.e. none whatsoever). This is so ridiculous I’ll have a full post explaining it later.
The public apparently can’t see the letters Prince Charles sent to the government. Now I’m something of a staunch monarchist, especially when I see the Americans working themselves into a lather with their equivalent, but this is predicated on the royal family not actually doing anything. I’m not going to bore you with my theories about monarchy, but it’s clear that Charles is in a position of quite spectacular unearned privilege. There is absolutely no way anyone in government would pay any attention to the gullible jug-eared chimp if it weren’t for the accident of his birth, exploiting that privilege by getting special attention from the government, even if he doesn’t realise that that’s what he’s doing, is one of the few things that would make me republican (in the anti-monarchy sense, of course).
Giles Fraser has an article which I suspect has been horribly mistitled by the Guardian, since it only mentions utilitarianism in the last paragraph, the rest of which is a rather innocuous piece on the importance of people focused morality. I can only assume from this piece that Giles has no idea what utilitarian moral theory is.
The Pope’s canonised some more saints, a practice I always find amusing since it fills the news articles with nonsense like “certified miracle”.
Hopefully this means I can forget about October now.
The Theodosian Connection 