{"id":174,"date":"2010-11-02T08:39:20","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T14:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=174"},"modified":"2010-11-02T08:39:20","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T14:39:20","slug":"anti-anti-ness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Anti-Ness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to U.S. Election Day!\u00a0 I hope everyone gets out and votes today.\u00a0 If you choose to not vote, just remember the words of Rush’s song, Free Will<\/em>:<\/p>\n

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The choice you make by not voting is to accept the outcome of those who do vote.\u00a0 Being Americans, that does not mean quiet acceptance necessarily, but it does mean acceptance.<\/p>\n

If you do<\/em> vote, acceptance is still a requirement.\u00a0 As Americans, we should understand whoever we are, there’s some minority (usually several minorities) we belong to.\u00a0 On election day, the candidate we vote for may not get elected, or the ballot measure we want to pass or not pass may fail or succeed in spite of our wishes.\u00a0 We must accept this and move on.\u00a0 Again, this acceptance need not be quiet.<\/p>\n

I hope everyone who votes today is voting for<\/em> people and measures, not against them.\u00a0 The latter is a little tricky; measures stand on their own.\u00a0 Ballot measures do not run against opposing measures.\u00a0 I think they should, as I think it’s part of what leads to all the negativity in campaigning.\u00a0 It would be simple enough to set up.\u00a0 Each measure would have the pro wording:\u00a0 Should the State Constitution regarding Matter X be changed to read “Y”?\u00a0 There would then be an opposing wording:\u00a0 “Should the State Constitution regarding Matter X be left unchanged?”\u00a0 This would make the measure clearer, I think, for people voting.\u00a0 One could more easily understand what option leaves things unchanged.\u00a0 Sometimes, and often deliberately, the wording of a measure is phrased in such a way that voting against the measure makes a change rather than voting for it.\u00a0 This would lead to less anti-ness.\u00a0 That is, campaign groups would (hopefully) focus on getting people to vote on option A or B instead of for or against Measure A as is the current standard.<\/p>\n

Less campaigning against measures would, I hope, lead to less campaigning against candidates.\u00a0 This is how most ads run these days:\u00a0 Candidate X will bring about doom and damnation.\u00a0 Some don’t even mention the opposing candidate, often because the opposing candidate has nothing to do with the ad.\u00a0 The group sponsoring the ad doesn’t want Candidate X in office, but rather than supporting the opposition, they oppose Candidate X.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 I am not against people or are against other people or things.\u00a0 That would be a contradiction.\u00a0 Being anti-something is fine as long as that something has nothing to do with the way somebody lives and so long as an alternative is proposed.\u00a0 These are two separate conditions of great importance to me.\u00a0 Don’t offer an alternative way for somebody to live–being straight instead of gay, for example–and expect me to accept it.\u00a0 Don’t support a measure if that measure does not offer a viable alternative to its opposition.<\/p>\n

Let me make that last part clearer.\u00a0 I ranted a few weeks ago about the anti-tax initiatives a fellow named Doug Bruce keeps getting on the ballot.\u00a0 Mr. Bruce would like to see taxes taken away, but he does not offer a workable way for the government to pay its expenses.\u00a0 His anti-tax measures are not viable alternatives to their opposition.\u00a0 Sometimes he suggests the local government will make up the difference by getting money from higher government–city\/county gets funds from state or state from federal–but this is not viable because the higher government isn’t offering those funds now and there’s no reason to expect it will just because there’s a local shortfall.<\/p>\n

In summary, get out and vote today, and vote for what you believe in, not for what you oppose.\u00a0 See you tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to U.S. Election Day!\u00a0 I hope everyone gets out and votes today.\u00a0 If you choose to not vote, just remember the words of Rush’s song, Free Will: If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. The choice you make by not voting is to accept the outcome of those who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}