I started writing this back in February, but didn’t manage to get it down in a condensed version until mid-August when I unleashed it as a tweet storm. Here’s the slightly expanded and cleaned-up version. Posted here for posterity so you can call me a genius or an idiot later.

The election in November isn’t going to be pretty. It won’t be done by the start of December, either. And when I say “not pretty,” I don’t just mean it’s going to take a while and involve people on CNN yelling at each other. Glad we’re all used to staying inside, because it’s going to be safer there.

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (the third largest county in the state) didn’t certify primary election results for over 14 days. That was in a primary with ~45% turnout among primary voters, which is around 85% of all registered voters. 14 days. Two weeks. Guess what happens when we hit 70% turnout of all registered voters? Think we won’t hit 70%? My precinct did n 2018. This was a high-turnout primary despite the fact that it was essentially a nothingburger for most of the races. Dems had a choice on Auditor General, Republicans had basically nothing. People were just excited to vote. They’re going to be even more excited in November.

Expect high turnout, especially since there is no “I couldn’t make it to the polls” excuse anymore. Expect way more mail-in voting wherever it’s available. That said, my precinct saw almost record-high turnout among in-person voters. Discounting mail-ins entirely, it was the third-highest turnout in the past two decades, and not by a huge margin. Add in the mail-ins and it was far and away the highest turnout my precinct has seen for as far back as they publish statistics for.

Exit polling is going to be all over the place, because we’re not going to be able to rely in exit polling on mail-ins. How could we? Exit polls are literally done by asking people walking out of the polls. Now, mail-ins and walk-ins in my area were pretty much evenly split along party lines as they related to a percentage of voters, but it’s probably a safe bet that exit poll numbers are going to favor Trump.

He’s going to claim victory based on that. You know he is. Why wouldn’t he? When we get the real final numbers in 2 (maybe 3 or even more) weeks, Biden is likely to be the winner, and he’ll claim victory. Now we have a problem. Think Trump will concede? He has adamantly refused to accept the results of an election that he won, what do you think he will say if he loses? That was always the plan, though. He was tweeting about how there was already fraud happening around mail-in voting, despite not a single ballot being sent out when we didn’t even know who was running. Fraud, in an election process that hasn’t started.

Thing is, mail-in voting isn’t rife with fraud. We have plenty of data on that from states that have been doing it. But that doesn’t matter – Trump has been spinning reality from his delusions because there is a significant segment of the population that believes everything he says, no matter how outlandish.

But now we have malicious manipulation of the postal system for the express purpose of stymying the mail-in voting process. We have the Trump campaign blowing millions to fight the placement of ballot drop boxes. On the whole, though, I expect that the system will work correctly. But that won’t exactly matter when the losing candidate starts launching lawsuits in every state he loses. I expect lawsuits in all 50 states. Legal teams are going to be thick on the ground in the swing states, though. And when it comes to states like Pennsylvania, where the results could take weeks, don’t expect to know by Thanksgiving who the actual victor is. That won’t stop the lawsuits, though. The first lawsuit challenging the results will likely be filed before the polls close.

What happens in between election day and final certification is going to be a lot of crazy. Trump is no stranger to whipping up his base with totally ludicrous statements that somehow people believe. Say 40% of the electorate votes for him. Say 25% of those people believe when he says the election has been stolen. That’s still 15 million people who are convinced that the election is illegitimate. Let’s say just 1 tenth of 1% of those people are willing to do something about it. You know what I mean. That’s still 15,000 people.

Do you think I’m speaking in hyperbole here? Wake up, it’s 2020. We’ve had people in the streets for months protesting actual injustice. We’ve had actual Nazis willing to kill out there. In Portland, we’ve had right-wing agitators aided by the police attacking locals for years. Those are the 15,000 people – the ones who are already on the street looking for targets. The political violence is going to get a lot worse.

Trump is already blaming Biden for all of this political violence, which is some egregious doublethink. What happens when he takes to the airwaves to make the case that unless the election is decided in his favor, violence will only intensify? He praised a 17-year-old who murdered protesters in cold blood. Do you really think he will ever go on television and ask for calm? At this point, if he did, do you think anyone would listen?

Any violence is going to be attributed to left-wing radicals and government forces are going to be brought to bear on them, despite repeated data that shows the violence is almost always instigated by right-wing provocateurs, sometimes with the implicit or even explicit aid of law enforcement. We’ve had waves upon waves of protests against injustice going for months now, and it’s just going to get more intense as those protests morph into protests against a stolen election.

Blue state governors are going to wind up in open opposition to the federal government. It won’t be talk anymore. We’re already seeing that in places like Washington and California, and even here in Philadelphia where the DA put federal law enforcement on notice. The federal system is going to get some serious strain the likes of which haven’t been seen since 1861. We already have a federal law enforcement apparatus that is acting as a political wing, issuing favors or reprisals against political allies and enemies at the behest of the President. What happens when that gets turned up to 11?

Out in the suburbs, it might feel a little tense, but in population centers, it’s getting close to civil war. Government institutions are breaking down and are being used for overtly political purposes. This election isn’t going to be fair and free, and it’s going to lead to even more political violence. That violence is going to persist after the election, regardless of who wins.

The question is how much, and can we survive it intact? I really hope I’m wrong. I hope that if Biden wins, Trump gracefully concedes in a manner that doesn’t sow discord, and we have a peaceful transition of power. I think there’s well more than enough evidence to suggest that isn’t going to happen, though.

There was no chance that Senate Republicans were going to acquit Trump, but they definitely did their level best to come off as dictator-state-running goons in the process. The worst part about at least one of their justifications is that it isn’t a bad argument. Marco Rubio had a compelling point when he said “Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office.” That’s actually a solid point. It’s a rebuke, an admission that the conduct was not above-board, but a plausible deferral to an appeal to stability. I disagree wholeheartedly, but I appreciate the merits of the argument, because they accept the basic facts of the case and reduce it to a point of opinion.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Rubio, they went hard into the defense that If The President Does It, It’s Not Illegal. Literally – Alan Dershowitz’s core argument wasn’t that Trump was not guilty of the thing that he was charged with, but that such a thing is not thing that a President can be impeached for. He literally argued that “maladministration” was something that the framers rejected, something that they thought was in the normal course of things. The President cannot abuse his power. Not only is this argument wrong, it’s dangerous.

Once the vote is done and Trump is acquitted 53-47 (or maybe, if Mitt Romney does the right thing when it doesn’t matter, 52-48), it will be a matter of record that It’s OK To Enlist The Aid Of A Foreign Power To Help Sway An Election, Because The Senate Said So.

James Madison, speaking in favor of writing impeachment of the President into the Constitution, argued that “some provision should be made for defending the Community [against] the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate. The limitation of the period of his service, was not a sufficient security. He might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers.” It should be noted that Madison was debating people who were arguing against the entire concept of impeachment. It would be logical to assume that Madison won that point. Yet, 233 years later when that exact thing happened, the winning argument was “the framers absolutely meant the exact opposite of what they said and wrote.”

(Of course, in the next breath from my previous Madison quote, he said “It could not be presumed that all or even a majority of the members of an Assembly would either lose their capacity for discharging, or be bribed to betray, their trust.” So maybe a bit naïve there, Jimmy, considering the Republicans hold a majority and were proud of the manner in which they betrayed their trust.)

Therein lies the crux of the issue. There was a way for all parties to conduct this in a manner that would not prove to be absolutely destructive to the Constitution yet still end with Trump acquitted, but Republicans chose the path of obliteration. This isn’t a slippery slope sort of argument, this is the reality. The argument of record about checking an out-of-control executive is that there is no Constitutional remedy. That elections are the only way to remove a President.

George Mason argued against this point when he added the words “high crimes and misdemeanors:” “Shall the man who has practiced corruption, and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt?” Dershowitz has successfully argued that the answer here is “yes.” “Sure, if the President wins an election by engaging in corrupt manipulation, the only way to remove that President is through an election, which they would be free to corruptly manipulate.”

The framers, at least the ones who had their ideas persist into the document itself, were very clear: elections are not the only recourse to a corrupt and dangerous administration. There is a built-in ejection seat, specifically for the purpose of removing a President who is abusing his power. Article II was not intended to be a suicide pact.

Marry this argument with unlimited money in politics thanks to Citizens United, and the Supreme Court affirming partisan gerrymandering as a thing that the framers (who wrote the document devoid of references to political parties), and you have a perfect recipe for a single-party dictator state. Once one part of the Constitution has been altered to remove parts that were inconvenient, there is nothing to stop other parts from going the same way.

We have witnessed a clear violation of multiple parts of our founding document, and the response was a collective shrug. The facts are not even in dispute: Trump did the thing. He admitted to doing the thing. His legal team says he did the thing. The thing is wrong. The thing is against the rules. The referees have viewed this evidence and decided that since it’s their guy, that means it’s OK, the rules don’t apply, and therefore, the Constitution is now a meaningless piece of paper, to be discarded when it is inconvenient. Article II has effectively been rewritten L’etat, c’est moi. Which part goes next?

It’s late one early summer evening, and I’m sitting on my porch, minding my own with a glass of iced tea. The traditional summer sounds are in the air – crickets, birds, children playing… are those gunshots? I live right on the suburban/rural split, so it’s not like I’ve never heard gunshots before, but they are very rare. The town I used to live in, we had a game called “Gunshots or Fireworks,” so I know they can sound very much alike. But no, those are definitely gunshots. And screams. Coming from the synagogue around the corner from me.

I grab my phone and call 911. “I’m hearing shots fired at Beth Or, you need to get officers over there immediately!” I tell the operator. I’m barely done saying that when I hear sirens. Police in these parts have some good response times.

I turn on the news and hope it’s not bad. When all is said and done, it turns out, it isn’t. Some racist asshole shot the place up and only managed to wound one person, who has already been released from the hospital. The local custodian, who barricaded a study group into a supply closet quickly before being forced to run himself. The shooter tried blasting his way through the door, but it was reinforced. There’s damage to the building, but that will heal. Of course, the shooter, being a heavily armed white guy, is taken peacefully into custody.

Mine turns out to be the first 911 call. Luckily for the DA, Beth Or has a pretty good surveillance system, so the shooter is clearly seen in the act. He didn’t even cover his face. The DA offers a ridiculously good plea deal, despite the suspect’s many ties to White Nationalist groups and racist comments they have made online, but the shooter and his crack legal team don’t take it – they want a trial. Their defense? He’s not guilty of a hate crime or 15 counts of attempted murder, because he didn’t actually kill anyone. He was just redecorating. He is actually a great friend of Jews and was helping with a Holocaust remembrance, and how dare you suggest otherwise? He can’t be guilty, because he’s such a bad shot that it’s inconceivable that he could even hit anyone. And even if he did, he has the right to keep and bear arms. What he did wasn’t even illegal. This whole process is a sham.

Moreover, the first witness they want to call is the person who very anonymously tried to get him in trouble by blowing the proverbial police whistle. Very malicious of that caller, who they hear is terribly biased against white people. They want me to testify, publicly. The shooter has the right to face his accusers, you know.

Except, that’s not even remotely the case. I am not “an accuser.” I am a third-hand witness who alerted proper authorities to what I perceived as a possible crime. Actual witnesses are willing and able to testify. Actual evidence shows the crime in progress. No only is there no legal basis to compel me to testify, there is no need. The evidence speaks for itself.

This scenario is, of course, fiction. Any even mildly competent DA would get a conviction in front of any jury, and the shooter would spend (not nearly enough) time in prison. More importantly, any judge in the country would take the suggestion that a 911 caller reporting shots fired could be compelled to testify as an accuser as complete idiocy and dismiss the motion out of hand.

The entire notion seems rather stupid, doesn’t it? Almost like all of the people involved with the shooter have no concept of or respect for the Constitution or the rule of law?

Among a subset of the various and sundry candidates for the 2020 Democratic nomination that I have already discussed, there’s an opinion that filing FEC paperwork entitles one to direct, unfettered access to the marketplace of ideas.

Michael Bennet, one of the useless Joe Biden clones with no actual ideas who does not belong in this race, said “The DNC process is stifling debate at a time when we need it most … rewarding celebrity candidates with Twitter followers.’’ No, asshole, they’re not doing that. They let you and 19 other people on the stage at one point, which is more candidates who have been taken seriously enough to be invited to a sanctioned debate than ever before.

The DNC’s criteria for the September debate were pretty basic: have 130,000 individual donors – that is, separate people who have pitched at least $1 into your campaign – and show 2% in four approved polls. Most of those polls are state-level polls that focus on the early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. That’s it. Of the 23 candidates still in the mix at the deadline, 10 of them qualified. 10. 10 candidates is still a largely unprecedented number. In 2016, there were five. Yes, Republicans had 16 at one point, but that was an outlier. And of this crop of 10, only three have cracked double digits.

Now, the margin of error on these polls is ~+/-2%. That means that a number of the qualified candidates could actually be polling closer to zero. And candidates like Bennet, who are actually polling at zero, well, the might be negative. That’s probably not how polls work, but if I’m answering one and Bennet’s name comes up, I’m not just registering my lack of support, I’m registering my antipathy for him.

Then we get Tom Steyer, who is under the impression that the presidency is for sale (probably because it is). This guy jumped into the race halfway through the September polling period, spent literally millions of dollars to get 130,000 donors who all gave a dollar, and then had the nerve to complain that he didn’t make the stage because he couldn’t buy polling.

But then he did. He made the thresholds for the October debate, which are, for some reason, exactly the same as September but with a longer polling period. So this buffon who has no idea other than “Impeach Trump” is going to get on the stage. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but at this point it’s basically like running on the “Hawai’ian Pizza Is Good, Fight Me” platform. Just because you’re right about one thing does not mean you have anything to add to the discussion.

Steyer managed 2% in four polls, and I’d really like to know who those people are. They saw 25 other people running, and picked a random jar of warm mayonnaise from the warm mayonnaise shelf. These are where the margins of error happen. I can’t believe that anyone legitimately supports Tom Steyer, because he has no discernable platform. He says nothing of value. He adds nothing to the debate. He is simply a walking pile of cash.

We have a DNC that is willing to let pretty much anyone on stage, and a crop of useless idiots who are complaining bitterly that they couldn’t walk over a bar that was effectively on the floor. And then we have a small subset of people who can’t even answer a poll correctly allowing some of those idiots to trip over the bar and onto the stage.

Back in the dawn of the nation, calling someone a small-d democrat was a duel-worthy slur, because small-d democracy was roundly derided as akin to mob-rule anarchy. They weren’t too far off base. There’s a mob, alright, but most of them couldn’t find their own asses with both hands, let alone actually rule anything.

A few people decided to run for the Democratic nomination for President. Here are my thoughts on them.

1. Hillary Clinton, but played by Abe Simpson – Joe Biden. It’s his turn. If he wins the nomination, Trump gets re-elected, Republicans hold the Senate, and probably take the House back.

2. Your Friend’s Grampa who is Really Cool and Woke, Unlike Other Boomers – Bernie Sanders is crotchety and seems a bit angry, but he’s angry about shit you’re angry about and chills with Cardi B, which quite honestly, you’re not sure about. I mean… is it possible that he’s cooler than you?

3. Lady Bernie Sanders – Jane Foster was a better Thor than Thor Odinson, and yet, was still called “Lady Thor” like “Wow it’s Thor but she’s got tits!” was what defined her. Similarly, Elizabeth Warren is everything good about Bernie Sanders, and she’s also better. Here’s hoping that they have an epic battle before Sanders realizes she’s better suited to wield them hammer and gives his blessing.

4. Store Brand Michelle Obama – Kamala Harris is the strong black woman in the race. However, she’s like Go-Bots instead of Transformers. Face it, you really wish she was Michelle Obama, because Best FLOTUS never locked anyone up for rolling a joint.

5. 2008 Barack Obama, But He’s White. And Gay. Pete Buttigieg is the only one in the race with Kennedy Swagger, but like 2008 Barack Obama, the only reason he’s polling so well is due to the fact that everyone wants to fuck him. He supports whatever policy position that best gets your pants off.

6. Eligible Bachelor Barack Obama, Who is Somehow Unpopular. Please explain to me how Cory Booker, a relatively charismatic black man – who is fair game for all of your fantasies – is not polling well?

7. Woman Selling Pies at a County Fair. Amy Klobuchar has a saying where she comes from, and I’m fairly certain it’s “Aw shucks.” That’s it.

8. Rich Guy Who Is Obviously Dying and Needs To Make Up For His Sins Quickly Lest He Burn In Hell. Andrew Yang is trying to give away money, and I can only assume it is to soothe his conscience after a life of shameless wealth-hoarding and probably more than a few murders.

9 and 10. Once Upon A Time In Old Mexico (Texas). Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro seem to be fighting over who is the least and/or most Texas, and neither of them is going to win. Also they’re both Latino, right? Beto sounds Latino, so I’m assuming. He has to be, otherwise why on Earth would he think he has any reason to be in the race?

11. Candidate Barbie. Like Barbie, Kirsten Gillibrand’s message gets lost due to the fact that people think she’s just a pretty face, which is sad, because it is a decent message that should resonate.

12. The Baroness from G.I. Joe. Tulsi Gabbard is strangely evil, even if you sometimes want to root for her because she’s calling out someone else’s evil. Just remember, her whole motivation is that she wants money and power and to fuck Destro.

13. Kind of Sexy Aging Captain Planet. Jay Inslee knew when he was licked, but he had a point and fought to get it center stage. Also with those glasses on… kind of a hunk.

14. Extra From a Seinfeld Episode Who Somehow Makes The Main Cast Look Sympathetic and Not Horrible. No one likes Bill DiBlasio. Even when he says things that make sense. He’s just clinically unlikable. He won New York City by being the least liked candidate, because that’s how New Yorkers vote. It has to be the way they vote, because Bloomberg and Giuliani.

15. Ms. Frizzle from Magic Schoolbus, Hopped Up On Peyote. Marianne Williamson is 100% bat-fucking crazy, but hot damn she’s actually made more than a few salient points, which makes perfect sense considering the reality we live in.

16-22. Escaped Rejects from the Joe Biden Clone Factory. Bennet, Hickenlooper, Bullock, Ryan, Moulton, Sestak, and Swalwell. Aside from the fact that I saw more than one on stage at the same time, I have no reason to believe they are different people . I assume all of them are named John. No, I’m not going to look it up. They are all identical, grotesque clones left to run free in Iowa. Every so often the authorities catch one. I don’t know which of them are still running.

I don’t care.

23. Another Biden Clone But Like One of The Failed Ripley Clones They Found in a Tank in Alien 4. Like that movie, John Delaney is just awful.

24. Florida Man, World’s Worst Superhero, Runs for President. Did you know that Wayne Messam was running for President? Do you know who Wayne Messam is? I guarantee you that there are people in Wayne Messam’s immediate family who can truthfully answer ‘no’ to both questions.

25. Montgomery Burns, Trying To Buy The Presidency. Tom Steyer literally spent millions of dollars in order to raise $130,000 just to get on the debate stage. I feel like having an idiot businessman purchase his way to power has worked out poorly before. Recently.

26. Whistling Abe Simpson, Walking Into a Restaurant, Putting His Hat On The Rack, Circling, Grabbing His Hat, and Walking Back Out. Mike Gravel actually did not realize he was running until someone told him, because a few high school kids filed for him.

27. Man, Momentarily Possessed by Demons, Breaks Free And Defeats Them. Richard Ojeda was running for exactly 69 days (starting on November 11, 2018) before he realized that was a completely stupid idea, and went back to being a normal person again. Number of candidates who entered the race after him: 15.

Constitution writing is a thought experiment I engage in from time to time. While I’ve never written out an entire theoretical constitution of my own, I do have a number of ideas about how ours works/doesn’t work, and how it could be improved. Thankfully, it has a built-in mechanism for upgrades, in the form of Amendments, that can clarify or outright change sections of the original document. Here are a few Amendment ideas I’ve kicked around, knowing full well that they would almost likely never get so much as a laughing dismissal by any of the avenues to make them reality.

Presidential Fitness Amendment

I. No person shall be eligible to the Office of President who shall have attained to the age of seventy years at the time of their inauguration.

II. No person shall be eligible to stand for general election to or assume the Office of President or Vice President who has not released to the public their personal and business tax records for the past seven years.

III. No person shall be eligible to stand for general election to or assume the Office of President or Vice President who has not released to the public a full medical evaluation from a panel of no less than six and no more than twelve qualified and accredited medical doctors in good professional standing.

IV. The House of Representatives shall have the sole authority to determine the members of this panel.

On its face, this seems like a complete rebuke of Trump, the oldest person ever sworn in as a first-term President. However, it would also exclude a number of Democratic candidates for 2020, notably Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as making Joe Biden’s decision easy. Yes, Trump’s refusal to disclose his financial reports and the sham of having a quack doctor sign off on his health are in there as well, but I can also cite FDR and JFK in the “medical history maybe voters would have liked to have known about” files, as well as Nixon’s tax woes. Having a panel of reputable doctors make a full assessment means we get fair and impartial medical data, not the say-so of some family friend, and having open tax records would give us some sense if a Presidential hopeful is, in fact, a crook (spoiler alert: probably).

Presidenting is a difficult job, or, at least, it should be. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama aged 20 years during their 8-year residencies at 1600 Pennsylvania, so maybe electing a guy who’s 78 isn’t the best idea. We haven’t developed a cure for aging yet, and Sanders, assuming he doesn’t try to stay limber on the golf course for most of his first term, could be reasonably expected to age another 10 years by the end of his first term. The average life expectancy for an American man is… 78 years. Sanders, if elected, will already be beating the curve on Day 1, and taking on a job that is going to age him more than twice as fast.

The effect is that if you’re 70 at the point you’d be sworn in, you can’t be President (or Vice President). 69 years, 364 days? Go for it. Same if you don’t release your tax returns. And you have to have a medical evaluation by the nation’s top doctors. The carved-out exception here is that someone who is 70+ could run and be elected to be Vice President, but they would be passed over in the line of succession, as would a foreign-born Speaker of the House or a 34-year-old Secretary of State.

Excluding the VP from Section 1 is the recognition that Vice President is not simply a John Adams-style emergency successor, but more of a Dick Cheney/Joe Biden senior advisor to the President. Of course, it probably wouldn’t take long for Old White Men to run for “Vice President” at the top of the ticket, but hey, it’s a start.

Further, this would push the realistic age for Presidential hopefuls down to 65 – if you turn 66 before you take office for your first term, you don’t get to run for a second term because you’d be over 70 prior to being sworn in. Presidential terms are only four years, which means winning a second term requires another inauguration.

This would work well with a repeal of the 22nd Amendment. Get rid of term limits – Someone being elected to their first term the year they turn 35 would only be able to serve a maximum of 9 terms under this plan. Yes, that is a long time, but with an average age of just over 55 years when taking office, we’re talking about an average eligibility for 4 terms. And that still requires winning every four years.

Like Reagan, I am deeply opposed to term limits. We already have them, we just call them elections. That line of thinking supposes transparent and unmarred elections, but in theory, at least, giving someone the opportunity to run for and win the Presidency 9 times should only be constrained by the electorate. One could make the argument that I’m imposing a term limit here, and that’s fair, but I see it more as enforcing a retirement age, not so much a term limit. You don’t get to hold the launch codes when you should be holding a Bingo stamp.

So yeah, it may seem like my Amendment is a direct response to Trump, but I’m also proposing allowing Don Jr. to serve six terms.

Congressional Representation Equality Amendment

I. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states by population, using half the population of the least populous state as the maximum size of a Congressional district.

Yes, this would increase the House of Representatives to (currently) 1,118 (1,155+ by 2020) members. But each would be representing only ~209,000 – ~289,000 people each, instead of the current ~578,000 – ~994,000. Yes, that’s right, Montana’s one Representative represents nearly twice as many people as Wyoming’s one Representative. By way of comparison, when the Constitution was ratified, Pennsylvania’s eight Representatives each represented roughly 54,000 people. Having fewer people per Representative means that Representative is more beholden to the people.

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution and subsequent Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s puts a floor on the number of people a district can contain, that being 30,000. This would add a ceiling, affording the state with the smallest population two Representatives and using that as the maximum size. Currently, that would mean Wyoming’s ~578,000 people would have two Reps, each representing ~289,000 people. There would still be some disparity in district sizes, because the next smallest state, Vermont, has ~626,000 people, meaning it would get three seats each comprised of ~209,000 people.

Anti-Gerrymandering Amendment

I. All representative districting plans shall consist of: districts composed of compact and contiguous territory; as nearly equal in population as practicable; and which do not divide any county, city, incorporated town, borough, township, or ward, except where necessary to ensure equality of population.

This one dovetails neatly into the previous one. Smaller, more competitive districts nationwide. This Amendment would also not simply concern itself with House representation, this would affect any representative (small r) districting plan – state assemblies and senates. The text is lifted almost verbatim from League of Women Voters, et al. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the PA Supreme Court case that completely redrew the Congressional map in PA to eliminate the 2nd most gerrymandered map in the country.

According to rumors, there are a passel of new Star Trek shows under development, including the possibility of Patrick Stewart stepping back into his role as the smoothest of operators, Jean Luc Picard.  I’d like to spitball a few ideas I would like to see made into shows.

1. Star Trek: Ambassador: Jean Luc Picard, now retired from Starfleet, has become the civilian diplomat everyone expected him to be.  A gritty drama about the political machinations of the Federation as it deals with the various turmoils in the wake of the Dominion War. Tons of untapped potential to show a very different side of Trek using a fan favorite to secure the initial buy-in.
2. Star Trek: Dirty Jobs: Imagine Firefly, just in the Trek universe. A small ship with a quirky crew, but instead of quasi-outlaws, they’re a clean-up/salvage crew that’s basically following the Enterprise around, cleaning up various space debris from its encounters.  Could be a sidequel to TNG, happening just in the wake of old episodes.  Imagine the salvage from Wolf-359!EDIT: You’re welcome for this idea, CBS.  Now please option Star Trek: ShiKahr and cast Robert Carlysle.
3. Star Trek: Me and Q: Wesley Crusher, having been abandoned on the other side of the galaxy by the Traveler, meets up with Q, who realizes that Wes is one finger-snap away from being a Continuum member.  Now a Q in his own right, Wes decides to travel the galaxy and is joined by a young Q love interest.  A road show, romp through the unexpected.  Frequent guest star John de Lancie!  Also, and I say this with all seriousness, please put Wil Wheaton back into Trek because he is a treasure.
4. Star Trek: ShiKahr: A series set on Vulcan in the Surak contemporary period. We get to see the wars that lead to the Romulan exodus and Vulcans in their original, non-logical state.

It’s taken me a few days to coalesce my thoughts about the attacks in Paris, but in writing this I was really waiting for the inevitable reaction. Unfortunately, I could have written this days, or even months ago, and it would have been the same.

I can’t imagine what the people of Paris are going through. In many ways, this is a more horrifying attack than September 11th, or even the Charlie Hebdo attack.  This was not an attack on a specific target – even the Bataclan was not really a ‘target’ per se, other than having a high concentration of victims available.  9/11 was a strike against a symbol made by ultimately faceless killers, as everyone they directly terrorized died with them, and the overwhelming body count actually veers into Stalin’s ‘statistics’ category.  Charlie Hebdo was a directed strike against a singular group that the average person likely had a strong opinion on but didn’t think about often. The attack probably reinforced their opinion, and left them with the comforting notion that as long as they didn’t do what Charlie did, they’d be safe.

This attack, however, is the kind of attack I’d have been making against the west since 2001 were I a terrorist mastermind.  This is visceral, up front, random violence that leaves a lot of blood and even more witnesses.  This is the kind of attack that truly terrorizes a population.  It doesn’t give them the option of staying away from symbols or comforting themselves with notions that if they don’t poke the bear, it won’t eat them.  This is what terror looks like.

With all the outpourings of sympathy, for the changed user icons with French flag overlays, one would think that this is a rare occurrence.  I suppose it is, if you’re a privileged white Westerner.  But these kinds of attacks happen almost daily around the world. 147 people were murdered in an attack on Garissa University College in Kenya in April. 233 civilians were massacred over two days in Kobani, Syria in June. 145 people were murdered in a series of bombings in Borno State, Nigeria in September.  Those are just a few of the ‘larger’ attacks, but we almost never hear about them on the news, or they’re part of the background noise that’s quickly forgotten. I say this as an NPR listener – I remember all of those events being reported, but they were tucked into the regularity of other reporting and had a shelf life of maybe two days. In contrast, the Paris attacks became the only news on for hours, and is still being discussed.

We care now because the bodies are white, because they were enjoying music that we like when they died, because we saw first-hand accounts on social media. To put a fine point on it, the people who died were us. There’s a perception that everywhere that’s not speaking English is a dirt-poor third-world country where this sort of thing is an accepted part of life, but that is not the case.  People die in these attacks doing the same things the people in Paris died doing, and it gets broadcast on social media just the same.  We don’t see it, because we don’t speak Swahili or Arabic or Yoruba.

The death toll in Paris is tragic, but the real tragedy will truly unfold in the days and weeks to come. The mindset of France today should be familiar to anyone who remembers September 14th, 2001 in America.  We were numb, we were angry, we were ready to bomb anyone who didn’t give full-throated support to our desire to bomb everyone.  We were looking for enemies under every rock, and when we found people who looked like them, we didn’t stop to ask questions first. France is ready to lash out at Syrian refugees, even though those refugees are fleeing the very same violence.  They’ve come to Europe to escape incidents like this happening on a daily basis. What they’re finding is a a disturbingly familiar othering from voices on the right that has led, in the past, to some rather dark times.

Of course, France isn’t just focused on internal threats. Long the cultural symbol of hesitance in the face of danger, unwillingness to fight, or outright cowardice (a relatively undeserved stereotype), France is gnashing its teeth and vowing, in the words of President Hollande, a “war which will be pitiless” which sounds like the perfect response to point to when I have to write this again in 10 years. Hollande is George W. Bush standing at Ground Zero, vowing that Al-Qaeda would “will hear all of us soon.” 14 years later, we have a line of futility drawn straight from that pile of rubble to the attack in Paris, and it’s labelled “the Islamic State.”  This is a beast of our own making.  Hollande’s pitiless war is just going to be more of the same.  Wars of vengeance do not solve problems, they create them.  The U.S. war in Iraq created IS. IS has no borders, so attacking it means attacking Syria and Turkey and Iraq and Lebanon and Jordan, and even breaking the military capacity of IS is effectively meaningless considering they weren’t rolling tanks into Paris.  Adding more death and destruction to the Middle East is the exact opposite of a solution to the problem, and it is fundamentally what IS wants.

The Islamic State is no stranger to massacring Muslims, as their targets are, by a wide margin, mostly people in their own neighborhood. The goal of this attack in Paris and others perpetrated in the West is to get the West to strike back.  Our own cultural insensitivity works both ways – they kill 140 people in Paris, and the average Kurd or Syrian doesn’t care in the same way we don’t care if 140 of them are killed.  Similarly, if the response is French war planes bombing targets up the street, or French soldiers going door-to-door, the people directly affected aren’t going to sit there calmly and accept that this is because of an attack 2,500 miles away.  All they’re going to see is France wrecking their town.  And eventually, an IS ideologue is going to sing sweetly to their children that they can get revenge, all they have to do is wear this vest and go to heaven.

So yes, I mourn for Paris.  But we need to stop acting like this is the only real terrorism, or that the responses we’re seeing are acceptable or even useful.  Because if we do, I’ll just be able to change a few names and post this again.  And again. And again.

One of my friends asked me recently “what makes you such a liberal?”  This was in response to a discussion we were having about capital punishment.  It was an honest question that deserved an honest answer.  I’ve had a few different answers over the years that tended toward snark, but I kind of surprised myself when I quickly came up with a solid answer that very concisely explains my political beliefs.

“A lot of examination,” I replied. “I look at things from the eyes of the lowest common denominator.”

On any given socioeconomic subject that I find myself in need of an opinion on, I ask myself two questions.  These might not always be conscious questions, but in retrospect, these two questions are the only ones that matter to me.

1) Who is hurt the most by various outcomes, and what do they think?

2) What does the science say?

His response was “Isn’t that just a matter of common sense at that point?” As Stephen Colbert has said, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Let’s take the capital punishment example we were discussing.  Who does capital punishment hurt? The answer to that is easy: the poor and minorities.  The death penalty is applied so lopsidedly to people of color and people who can’t afford their own defense that it’s impossible to look at the numbers and not immediately see the correlation (unless, of course, you don’t want to see it).  The difference between life in prison and a needle is, almost universally, your ability to hire competent council, and the color of your skin.

Now, what does the science say?  It says that states with capital punishment have a higher murder rate than those without.  It’s not a deterrent.  If anything, it’s an aggravating circumstance.  These states don’t value life, why should their citizens?

Every issue I have an opinion on fits this framework, and almost every single time, I end up with what is typically held to be the “liberal” position.  Not necessarily the Democratic Party’s talking points, but what is commonly viewed as the far, but not necessarily radical, left.

Note that there’s no consideration to faith, religion or dogma there.  Science, and a concern for the most affected, are my guiding principles.  Almost everything I have a position on doesn’t affect me.  I’m a white, middle-aged, heterosexual male smack dab in the center of the middle class.  I am, demographically, about as close as you can get to the most privileged person that you can find (the only thing I’m missing is a few million dollars in annual income), so things like being racially profiled by the police, easy access to healthcare, and being paid only a percentage of the standard due to my plumbing aren’t things that directly affect me.  That being said, I know people that they do affect, and my concern for them becomes a general concern for everyone in that situation.

An argument I’ve been making for a few years now is about a certain piece of technology that we should have by now but don’t.  It’s 2015, and we’ve launched a handful of human beings toward the moon and brought them back, harnessed the power of the atom to flash-murder a few hundred thousand people at once, and cured smallpox.  Science really has no limits.

No, I’m not talking about hoverboards or self-lacing shoes or even flying cars.

Driving along a windy, hilly road in the rain last night, I came across what is essentially my driving nightmare scenario.  I see, for just a split second, a deer on the road ahead in my lane, before the guy coming toward me also sees the deer. His reaction is to put on his high beams. The deer instantly vanishes, drowned out by the light I’m trying to see through.  If I’d blinked in that second, I would just have though it was some random jerk with his brights on, and plowed merrily into the deer that was apparently quite pleased to wander in traffic.

My point here is why did this scenario have to happen? With all of the advancement in vehicle technology – GPS navigation – fuel economy, impact safety, handling, etc. – why is it that we don’t have night vision?  Why do we need anything other than running lights for safety?  At night, in the rain, the lines on the road practically disappear.  Why doesn’t my windshield compensate for this?  I’d rather see that deer in green than have it come flying through my windshield.

And yeah, I understand cost.  But I can guarantee you that all of the aforementioned technology that we already have was developed at significant cost, yet is now considered standard.

So get on it, science.  Imagine all of the light pollution we could cut out if we didn’t have 250 million sets of headlights on the road.