FLASH POST: Equal Opportunity, Independent Majority Districts, and Inspiring Voters

The other day, I had a one-sided conversation with someone on Facebook about political gerrymandering and people in the United States not having motivation to vote. I had the following to say voting districts and motivating people to vote:

I started writing an essay awhile ago (that I never finished) that was to propose what if instead of the "competition" qualification, what if we used "Fair Opportunity". I'm not exactly sure how to execute that qualification, but it seems more fair to me than even the citizen's definition, considering how much voter & turnout suppression we have going on. Do the voters coming out even provide a good sample of eligible voters or are they just base activists that aren't facing voter suppression?

Or is it possible to make independent voters the majority of districts?

All of the above, but I think on a more simplistic level, I think our society, politicians, campaigns, etc do a horrible job inspiring & motivating people who don't face suppress & suppress the others.

As I once said somewhere else, bad actors don't want people voting because it means it's easier for them to stay in office.

In the meanwhile, we have the Far Left activists who feel spit on by the Establishment & feel that their vote doesn't matter because we keep getting bad actors in their eyes (a la Occupy Wall Street) whereas, in my opinion, we need more of these activists & organizers to get into actual politics, become candidates, etc because I think they can make positive contributions in sync with other activists & such.

It's definitely a compounding loop that needs to be broken. Those discouraged activists & disillusioned folks need to be encouraged. I've read about it, mostly in communities of color, and we need it all over the place.

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FLASH POST: Are Results of the Economy Under Trump Pretty Much Happening by the Book?

Trump talks like he's some amazing economic savior for the country, but everything that has happened to stimulate the economy seems completely predictable. . .while also sounding like some running on a caffeine high every day. . .in that the economy will eventually grown tolerant to the caffeine and eventually lose the high.

Conservatives had their own book of assumptions, though, that doesn't seem to go according to reality (even though the By The Book of predictable economics could see it coming a mile away). The conservatives made the assumption that employers would make capital investments and increase wages. But lo, employers engaged in stock buybacks and mostly just gave bonuses, not as many wage increases as expected (and even where they did, the results ended up screwing workers).

And what bonuses and wage increase occured, it doesn't amount to much because inflation largely tracked with the wage increases in 2018. Apparently CPI has stayed low so far in 2019, but that's mostly from gas and energy, mostly from outside of the country that I don't think conservatives have as much control of. . .unless maybe through some crony deals with Saudi Arabia to keep down gas prices. . .and is that worth the moral cost and the lives lost to support the Saudi Arabian war in Yemen?

But here are the couple of articles that I found that support my argument that most of the economic gains since 2016 in the US have pretty much been by the book and not necessarily anything expected to be sustainable:

How Trump’s tax cuts are boosting GDP, and why that might not last - PBS

Opinion: Everybody predicted the surge in GDP that Trump says nobody predicted - MarketWatch

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SPECULATIVE FLASH POST: Did the Great Recession End the Post-War Period?

This episode of American Shadows starts by looking at Samuel Adams as a conspiracist. The episode pushed me into a deep dive into Euro-American history since the American Revolution and earlier to understand Parliament of England, the French Estates General & various other legislative bodies in France, and the Habsburg Monarchy/Holy Roman Empire/Central Europe to WWII. This is a bit of history I tend to focus on from different angles.

But this time, I've reached a hypothesis: I believe future historians will consider The Great Recession as the point in history in which the Postwar Period ended and a new era started. . .

• Ukraine
• Putin
• Brexit
• Greece
• Arab Spring
• Libya
• Syria
• Trump
• Viktor Orbán in Hungary
• The Rise of illiberalism again

Frankly, I feel kinda bad for Obama since he won the 2008 POTUS Election just as people started realizing how really bad things were and would be getting because of the Great Recession. So many firsts, including watching the fall of Euro-American stability after many years of rising pluralism.

(I also received a shock today when I heard The Moment discuss the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" and demonstrate that the episode has renewed resonance today when back in the day, the episode might have felt over the top.)

The beginning of a future holds much promise and a lot of negative possibilities. I hope the human race survives long enough for it to become a historical period since we could destroy human civilization by just not addressing issues of climate change, let alone our relations with each other. Hopefully we just have to push through an initial dark time to reach a time of maturity, prosperity, and peace rather than continued despair. But we can only reach that better future if we work together to create good will and the desire to solve problems before we destroy civilization.

So how about it? Thoughts? Ideas? Innovations? Can we avoid destruction?


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STATEMENT: Aiming to get Paid for My Writing by Marketing to Publications; Plan to Use Lextopia for Other Things, Unsure What Presently

I fractured my heel in a bike accident back in October when a delivery driver rear ended me. The impact sent me flying off my bike. Looking back, I'm amazed that I landed square on my foot with enough bullet time to figure out how to avoid a wall or fence before falling on a shoulder, somersaulting, or whatever I did to avoid any further damage to my body (not even any additional scratches!).

I used crutches starting that night until sometime from the beginning to the middle of January. My foot still hurts and will likely continue to hurt for awhile. I've been doing physical therapy twice a week since December and, at minimum, will likely continue to the end of March. Even after I finish PT, the pain will likely continue and stretches will likely need to continue for awhile.

I relate this story to explain why my time management sucks lately with two nights of PT a week and stretches that I need to do at night on other days. The past week ended up a doozie. I went out both Thursday and Friday, so that left only Tuesday open and free to do my stretches. By this weekend, the soft tissue in my leg and foot has gotten damn sore again, reminding me of the importance of making sure I stretch.

In addition to having free time reduced from injury, I've also made some progress in my book/bachelor project writing and novel. Paying attention to and mulling over current social tensions and how they affect how people relate and reading a lot into general social science topics that touch upon the project (but not the actual historical events or the utopian theory) have both yielded some useful material to work with. Today I wrote about two pages of outline that address topics wells and did so in a succinct and concise fashion, both of which I aim for.

If you've paid attention to my social media, you'll have seen that I've started writing in the novel again. A couple weeks ago, I wrote a little more than five pages within a few days, after not having written for about three months since I had broken my heel. I would have thought that being bedridden and people having more understanding about me not being able to leave home, I would have had more output. Apparently such results don't happen when one's brain gets all muddled, one's body doesn't want to do anything, and when moving from one side of the apartment to the other has become such a hassle because using crutches requires a lot of energy and don't forget the planning that it takes to move efficiently with a bag to carry things then maneuver around things. On the bright side: I caught up a lot on TiVo watching.

I've also reached the point that I want to get paid for my essay writing. The wife insists on encouraging other people to get paid for their writing. When they're about to post a thread on Twitter or post an esssay on a blog, she encourages them to market it to publications out there. The topics of those threads or essays tend more toward cultural criticism of science fiction, fantasy, and around alternative viewpoints don't come from a straight white cis-guy, so I can appreciate why she doesn't insist on me marketing my essays as much as other people. Besides, this insistence of her's rubs off on me passively, anyway, so she doesn't need to direct her efforts toward me.

Once many years ago, someone once tried to urge me to try writing movie reviews for publications, too. I didn't really have the confidence then, nor did I think that I had the time to spare. Apparently my confidence level has increased since those many years have passed.

Straight up, readership, I haven't received enough Ko-Fi contributions to continue posting my essays here on the Lextopia when I might be able to find venues for my writing elsewhere. I don't plan to completely abandon The Lextopia. For one, researching markets provides a whole new venture that could prove interesting and worthwhile to comment about. For instance, I just checked out In Our Times, a radical democratic leftist labor-focused publication that has some worthwhile viewpoints to keep eyes on. It doesn't provide a great venue for the current essay I want to market, but maybe someday. Maybe I'll post about that research here and there.

When I do publish essays, I plan to post links here to them. I might occasionally come up with something that doesn't feel appropriate for publication in some other venue. Maybe I'll have other matters that I want to advocate about quickly or just has a more personal angle to them. I don't know, but I'd like to continue using the Lextopia as a way to keep up communication with the public in one way or another about stuff that just has a better place on a blog than a publication.

If you have any idea of publications that I should look at to consider marketing my work to, though, please don't hesitate to reach out to me in the comments, through social media, or through an e-mail. I think the e-mail link/fields on the right side of the screen should still be functional. . ..

Thank you for reading up to this point.

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FLASH POST: Inactivity Enables Bad Politicians; Rising and Activeness Will Get Us Good Politicians

Bad, corrupt politicians have every incentive to continue being bad, corrupt. The worse they are, the more people feel that the politicians are out of touch, the more people feel their votes don't matter, & the more people feel alienated by their government. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!

If you can register and vote, REGISTER AND VOTE! And also do what you can inspire other people too disillusioned to vote & to help disenfranchised people get registered & able to vote. By being inactive, we enable bad, corrupt politicians. Only by rising & getting active can we get good politicians into office that will be answerable to us. The more we vote, the more our votes matter. Only by acting can WE, THE PEOPLE form a government of the people, by the people, for the people.