USA political thoughts/questions

I'm kind of feeling like a blog post might be useful for then moving on to other things. This is still a busy period for me, personally, but at the same time, I don't want to completely ignore national political events in the USA.

For this election, I was curious about overall voter turnout. There are a couple arenas where one of this country's major political parties really hasn't been doing a good job of paying attention/strategizing, and election commissions is one of those arenas. I'd like to think those positions should be fairly neutral, but in a country that uses an electoral college system to determine its president, well, it seems better to assume politics all the way down.

Anyway, a cursory look yesterday at voter turnouts showed me that there was relatively high turnout again for 2024, although not as high as 2020 (67% is pretty amazing). People who like to jump in and do post-mortem analyses seem to be mostly focused on which specific demographic groups seem to have changed their minds between 2020 and 2024, with some hand-wringing over how that could have happened. I was more interested to learn that in this election, the number of voters who identified as "Independents" was larger than the number of Democrats, and tied with the number of Republican voters.

To me that just reinforces a notion that the entrenched political parties in the USA really aren't speaking in a meaningful way to a substantial portion of the population. Each political party has a lot of baggage associated with it, and in many cases it's the same sort of baggage associated with both parties (corruption, scandals, etc).

I have a personal preference for making voting decisions based on track records and specific policies, but am well aware that a lot of people vote based on feelings and misguided hopes (e.g. American exceptionalism). I think quite often about a bumper sticker S had on a computer maybe 10 years back: "You are stupid and evil and you do not know that you are stupid and evil."

One concern I do have: people associated with one of the major political parties in this country have been screaming about elections being rigged against them (see: January 6 riot, 2021). Most of the evidence I've encountered suggests that it's one of those misdirection situations, where the actual cases and observed evidence of rigging suggest it's members of that political party itself that have been bad actors. But also, my understanding is that those cases are exceptionally rare, and for the most part in the post-hanging-chad era, most of the elections processes in this country are legitimate. In contrast, cases of voter registrations being purged are less rare; altogether, I remain worried that the party crying wolf is a wolf in sheep's clothing, but that idea doesn't seem to be prominent in the general discourse.

In any case, for me this election seems like a stark and painful reminder that intellectuals are a minority, as to me it seems difficult to hold a position based on logic that would favor of one of the two candidates. That does not mean it favors the other candidate, but might mean the other candidate becomes a "less-worse" option.

The outcome is also making it clear to me that I still very much live in a specific kind of social/information bubble. I'm not sure about what, exactly, I am going to do about that. Right now I'm just generally frustrated by mainstream media, mainstream social media, and the moneyed interests that manipulate them. Also by the moneyed interests, but I guess maybe we just have to acknowledge that we live in another era where robber barons are in charge again.

It seems like this election outcome is less likely to lead to protests in the way the 2016 and 2020 elections did. I need to think further about how it might change my own actions.

In the meantime, there are other immediate things on my plate to get back to, so I think I will.

Now where were we [status, cats, boatbuilding]

I really didn't manage to post much while out at scrottie's boat, in large part because there were a number of other things to attend to. For example, seeing how well the cats would adjust to boat life. Martha started to make forays out to the cockpit and onto the deck by Tuesday, while George's main strategy seems to be "try to sleep it all off like it's a bad dream." On Wednesday morning, while Martha was out, I set him out in the cockpit and he didn't instantly dive back into the boat.

I think the cats' ears kind of tell the whole story.




Based on how the cats have been doing so far, they're going to stay with S on the boat for at least the next week or so while I'm in El Cerrito hanging out with R and L's cats, chickens, betta fish, and garden. We're hoping at some point to figure out a way for S to come over to El Cerrito as well, but it seems best to manage any associated cat diplomatic negotiations in stages, as R and L's cats are far less boisterous than George and Martha.

I spent much of the day on Tuesday driving to and from El Cerrito, for the sake of route-testing, figuring out logistics at my sister's house, and getting the ants situated. I'm pleased to report the ants are now situated, although I didn't take any pictures. For my return route I tested out the "avoid highways" recommendation. There were some sections that seemed like they would have been really fun to ride on a bicycle, but mostly that route was a lot of suburban traffic lights. So, better just suck it up and deal with the highways.

Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were rather windy, so I postponed my return to El Cerrito until midafternoon, which wound up going as well as it could. I am going to continue to wish that California drivers would remember how to use their turn signals. And I'm just going to avoid driving here as much as I can.

But I made it.

And my sister and slydevil are right, the boat and trailer *do* fit in their second driveway, with even a little room to spare:


However, their neighborhood isn't the most secure place ever, so with slydevil's help I spent the rest of the afternoon moving the boat and trailer onto their side patio:



The wet spot is where I bumped into an ageing bucket of pebbles and caused it to crack (sorry, R!).

To move the trailer, I disassembled it into the front and rear sections, which made it easier but not exactly easy to maneuver it through the gate. That also let me finally get the spare tire carrier installed, so the spare tire no longer needs to ride along inside the car, yay. This morning I put additional grommets into the tarp cover and reinstalled the tarps, so now the boat is protected from sunlight again.

We tried out putting the boat on top of the sawhorses that L and R have, but L and I were both a little concerned that the boat was rather high off the ground, given the wind and general stability of the sawhorses. So the trailer seems like the best parking spot for the time being. That means that when I get more settled here, I'll plan to resume my work on the inside, rather than working to finish the outside. At this point the interior work will consist of sanding everything with 220-grit, a thorough cleanup, and then varnish varnish and more varnish. It *can* be done.

But before any of that happens, I've accumulated a half-dozen errands to attend to. And so, without further ado (or maybe with it, heh), I shall.

This might be worthwhile reading material for today.

I've only skimmed it but it appears to have some useful substance to it.

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11/10-things-to-do-if-trump-wins/

Hmm. [status]

I kind of feel like errands ate up all the ambition I might possibly have had for today.

However, I did manage to contact people at my old rowing club, so that, at least, will get started up, and should help me do at least a little gradual fitness rebuilding before I get back to New York.

In the midst of my errands, I stopped in at Highwire Coffee Rosters, so the day did count as a bonus Coffeeneuring expedition, too.

I am pleased to have gotten 4 things in the mail, in total.

But it looks like Rigel Stuhmiller is no longer making flat card sets, just folded cards or postcards. So there goes one of my defaults for letter/note-writing. I really loved his flat cards but I reckon they might not have worked so well from a business standpoint. But I did see that he has a crow vinyl sticker design, so I might acquire some of those soon.

Life will go on, and I did manage to buy some small packages of cardstock at Payn's Stationery, but probably not nearly enough. So maybe I'll manage to get my act together enough to make my own card sets and then remember to have them with me for odd occasions when I want to send out cards.

I put the last 3 of the current ducks in one of the things I mailed, so once again, I no longer have any more ducks to give.

I can no longer remember which I like better from Berkeley Bowl, the Bulgarian feta or the French feta. It's also going to take me a little while to remember how to navigate here. I mean yeah, the Ohlone Greenway, but street names and how to get to the BAP and from there to campus and suchlike.