29 October 2014

Another Memo From Alternate History

Because I'm tired of it — year after year after year after year of having to choose between the lesser of "Who cares?" Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low I can hardly look at it.

They say a good man can't get elected President. I don't believe that; do you?

Leo McGarry, "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen (Part I)," The West Wing (episode 2x01, first broadcast 04 Oct 2001).

I'm afraid that I do believe that, Leo. And it extends far below the Presidency, and well outside the executive branch of governments at every level in the United States (not to mention elsewhere).

And to women as well as men, as epitomized by Allison Grimes in Kentucky. When Democratic Senatorial candidate Grimes was asked whether she had voted for Barack Obama for President, she evaded. She didn't have the brains or guts to turn the question back and shame the motives of those who ask invidious questions like that. I've been asked this by a snooty local reporter myself, so I'm going to quote my own answer:

What part of "secret ballot" do you not understand? Or do you care so much about being thirty seconds faster than your competitors to announce an unofficial estimate — one that doesn't consider the absentee ballots cast by military members from this area — that you'd rather ignore two centuries of America's commitment to individual conscience in the voting booth?

Needless to say, they didn't show that answer on the news in 2008. They sure as hell wouldn't today... although it's the answer Allison Grimes should have given, regardless of how much she agrees with President Obama. Or disagrees. Or is afraid of losing votes because she, herself, voted in the first place.

The less said about the panicky nonscientist morons imposing unwarranted imprisonment on asymptomatic healthcare workers, the better. Those doctors and nurses are perfectly capable of self-monitoring for the clear, obvious symptoms of a disease whose mortality rate seems, at least at first glance, significantly related to preexposure public health issues and nutrition and clean drinking water and the effect of all of those on an infected individual's immune system. I guess it looks like the governors of those states are doing something, so that must be good, right?