It’s been great fun since Trump took office, to read local letters to the editors in our local paper. Our city and county are relatively small, but we seem to have an inordinate number of experts and know-it-alls. Is it the same where you live? (I just started reading the local paper last year, when I moved to Trump Country.)

As a natural troublemaker and aspiring (since birth) Devil’s Advocate, parrying with local wits is enjoyable, entertaining, and often enlightening. My only responses are to those who write and profess, or hint at the fact they are smarter than everyone else. The local author who “knows how to solve the immigration crisis”, for example. Or the modest intellect who tries to support an idea using phrases and verbiage “copied” from what ever information silo they inhabit.

Intellectual Curiosity (IC) has been discussed here, before, and it is the root of all the merriment. Anyone who believes in Trump is an idiot. Don’t blow a gasket, yet, because anyone who believes in Biden was/is an idiot, too. Or Obama, Or Bush, Or Clinton. Or the elder Bush. Sadly, I can strike up a spirited and eventually personal debate about any one of them with certain letter writers. You can support them, but you shouldn’t adore them. They’re humans. And don’t give up your IC.

We need to start with the definition, the urban definition, of what politicians are: they are people who want you to hire them for a job. The “job” is not lawn maintenance, but a job where complicated, personal, and impactful decisions about the direction of the city, county, state, and nation (and world?) are decided. And the politicians are asking you to send them to an institution where it takes more than one person’s will to get something done. More on that in a later post.

We vote almost every year for one sort of politician or another and a majority of Americans just don’t vote. In the last election 77 million voted for Trump, and 75 million voted against Trump. According to internet sources, most of the “Voting Eligible Population (VEP)” of the United States, about 89 million people, did not vote. (Note: VEP 244,666,890** per US News. Do your own math.) More people DID NOT VOTE, than voted for either candidate.

A smart person can see neither party presented a candidate that appealed to at least half the population. So, what does it mean when we say we “hate Joe Biden” or we “hate Donald Trump”? Is it a rational hate or a tribal hate?

Got way off track, but the point is most politicians (if not all) spend most of their time trying to convince YOU to vote for them. And once you do, they tend to start looking ahead to the next election. It’s a mistake if anything ever gets down. When IC kicks in, you begin to question the whole system, and not in a good way. Maybe those 89 million people know something.

The solution? Outlaw “homogenous” voting. The two-Party system demands you vote with (or against) one party or the other…no matter the issue! Ever hear of “Majority and Minority Whips? Guess what they’re supposed to do. It really is a wonder the government has survived for 200 and some years.

Mixed in with all this nonsense are the experts and arm-chair quarterbacks who know all about everything. In a local locker room one time, two guys were commiserating about how bad America looks to other counties. “We aren’t respected anymore.” When I asked if either had ever been to another country, or had friends in another country, or could even name another country…silence.

While it is great fun to poke and prod the local geniuses, I’ve been fortunate to never have to express my own opinions. Sounds like a cop-out, right? But my own opinions are not party-oriented or any particular color. And I don’t truly know half of what I say about issues since I’m not personally in the middle of them. I just know what I think I know. I’m not sure, for example, why SignalGate happened, but know we’ll learn more from the fuss after an issue than we knew before, so pay attention. IC.

I am afraid to state my own beliefs, too, because they are too naïve. Too Jimmy Stewart, too “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” They are easy to make fun of in a world full of experts and internet snipers.

So, I’ll continue trying to pop other’s balloons and wait for the world to get its act together. It’s only been about 55 years, so far, but what else is there to do?

** Numbers for 2024. VEP includes all legal American citizen over the legal voting age. Note that only 160 million are “registered” to vote. A few VEPs might be way beyond that legal age, so…