A Very Ordinary Day

I reached my first major milestone yesterday, able to do an end-to-end system walk through on my concept. There's much that remains to be done, but having that path through is an accomplishment. Today I hope to make it cleaner, and enhance the experience somewhat, and plan the path forward.

But there's something much bigger going on today. Something that has a lot of attention and will change things from how they've been to how they will be. Yes, that's right, I'm speaking of the change I need. The change from my summer tires to my winter ones.

Oh yeah, there's also that crazy spectacle to the south. It's a battle where on one side, people think that it's best to have 'someone like me' running their country, though they would readily admit that they have no skills or knowledge to run their country. 'I'm a plumber, a soldier, or a housewife or a hockey mom, and I'm so happy to see someone like me running for office.'

On the other side people are excited to a frenzy because they have someone who can form a complete sentence, and whose skin is a different colour. 'Yay,' they exclaim 'I think we can actually do this. It's 2008, so we can almost, just maybe, allow another human with a different skin pigmentation to be considered for a leadership role.' Pretty crazy stuff, but very entertaining when you don't have to live there and have day-to-day decisions made by these folk.

Oh yeah, then there's the other element of the challenge today. Big teams of legal experts will work to try to stop people from the other camp from disenfranchising many voters in areas based on their perceived preferences. Also, big teams of party workers have been working on schemes to jam phone lines of the democratic party, to send notices telling voters that if it rains, they vote next week, to tell them they can get a discount and vote or register for only $49. Others have been working at purging names from voters lists in a hope that they can reduce the numbers in certain areas. 'If we can just stop or destroy or disallow enough voters in certain areas, we can win this thing, and our freedom and liberty will be safe!'

All this from the self-professed bastion of democracy. Then those who do get through to vote, face a sheet the size of a billboard, and crazy, wonky apparatus that is different in every county. The ballot has confusing voting schemes like completing a line with a break in it, or punching a hole with a sharp pin. Of course, the idea of putting an 'X' in a box is unworkable. How people with little or no education, the most marginalized in their country can figure out the process is beyond me.

Security precautions are in place, to avoid violence at polling sites - much like Zimbabwe, or Haiti for example. The leading candidate will be protected by bullet proof glass when he speaks. The other one will do it over a CCTV link rather than face humans.

Where is the UN in all of this? If ever there was a country that needed UN observers during an election, this is surely one.

Oh yeah - freedom. That's the other claim to fame. Freedom of religious perspective, of thought, of assembly, of speech. Yet they can speak with derision to dismiss half your nation as 'liberal' - what a dirty word that is; what unacceptable thoughts they have! People who espouse ideas based on political principals considered 'liberal' seem as though they truly could be rounded up for special 'camps' if some of their leaders and pundits who speak with such hatred had their way. How is that one word label to categorize and reject a group of people any different than a racial word?

Oh and those that consider using tax money to guarantee health care to everyone, social programs for the poor, and structure that stops banks from failing - those ones are socialists. We can similarly indicate our hatred for those thoughts with a single word.

And someone who doesn't put a flag on their house, or lapel, well, we'll force them to put one on. 'If they don't want to embrace our freedoms, we'll make them. That's how free we are here.'

I hope their election goes well, and hope that more than the usual 30% show up to get all free and democratic on us. It will certainly be great TV entertainment with drama, craziness and shenanigans. Once it's all wrapped up they can get back to spreading freedom and democracy to the third world. Maybe they'll be ready to adopt a bit of it themselves...

My one day of political ranting. I sure hope that stuff doesn't get across the border and erode our society like it has theirs.

Researchinator returns to apolitical software development...