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Vice-Presidents

10/24/2024

What would we do without vice-presidents? Almost all organizations have someone at the top and another someone one level below. That person is supposed to support the leader on issues and do work the leader doesn’t want to trouble with. Most often these second level folks are called vice-presidents and many hope eventually to move up to the top spot in their organizations.

One such organization is the executive branch of the United States government. Historically, being vice-president there has been an unenviable role. Until relatively recently they were a powerless entity whose main job was not to embarrass the president. Until the president died in office and the lower person was catapulted to the top.

That has changed lately so someone like Kamala Harris is experienced in many of the intricacies of the presidency. Thank goodness. Because in some sense she has been catapulted, just not in the conventional way.

Which brings me to discussing the vice-presidential candidates of the current election. They recently had a debate. The current wisdom is such debates should be used to advance the campaign of their leaders with perhaps a smattering about themselves, all without saying something embarrassing.

We hoped Walz would tell us more about the experience and policies of Kamala Harris as opposed to Joe Biden. And just maybe, apparently unrealistically. Vance would put our minds at ease about the train wreck that would follow a win by Trump.

I think Walz did a pretty good job of fulfilling that goal. Vance did a pretty good job of escalating my fears.

What I don’t think got much attention at the recent debate, or any such debates in the past, was a discussion of what would happen if either candidate was forced into the presidency. This was probably more important to consider for Vance since his boss seems to be a candidate for a heart attack or a slip into dementia.

The trouble for us is, you never know the future. After all, of the 45 presidents we have had, eight have died in office and hence opened the door to their vice-presidents. Also, Gerald Ford became president after Nixon resigned. So that’s nine total, meaning vice-presidents were called to step up 20 percent of the time.

Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to look at the vice-presidential candidates as potential presidential ones (which they may very well be eventually).

What if Walz became president someday? Maybe not too bad a situation. He has executive experience. Seems to have his head screwed on right. Takes his job seriously, but not himself. Yeah, I could probably live comfortably with him as president.

What about Vance? He has no executive experience. He seems to be a devotee of his boss, achieving an excellent propensity for lying. And he shares the same abysmal moral commitment. Is he a budding Trump? I think one could make that argument. But there is one big difference. Vance is a lot smarter than Trump and would undoubtedly do a better job of ruining our country. The hints he is buddying up to Project 2025 certainly supports such a conclusion.

So, as we decide between Harris or Trump, we also have to consider a similar decision between Walz or Vance.

It doesn’t take much to determine that Walz wants to build our country while Vance is itching to tear it down.

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It's Not a Fair Fight

10/21/2024

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Do you ever feel it’s the wrong people who come out on top of disputes?

Why do you suppose that is?

I guess before we can talk about it we have to know what we mean by “wrong.” I bet each of two people in a dispute knows what it means. It means the way the other person is.

I think my definition would be something like this. Consider two antagonists.

Suppose She is honorable, respects others and their opinions. She gives weight to those opinions and offers logical arguments to defend her own. She plays fair and would feel bad if She lied in order to make a point.

He, on the other hand, is unbothered by such limitations. Honorable is an attribute not to be exercised but to take advantage of. A conscience is scoffed at. Lies are a tool, not an unacceptable argument. Fairness is a concept not understood.

Of course, He is the wrong one, at least in my mind.

What chance does She have?

Well, sometimes she does come out on top.

For example, Hitler and Tojo lost World War II.

And a lying, cheating, manipulator representing New York in our national House of Representatives was ejected.

But such examples, important as they may be, seem to be the exception.

How about the aggressive driver who, seeing a parking space opening and a woman aiming for it, chomps on the accelerator and beats her to it.

And a man like Vladimir Putin who can take over a country with lies and force and steer it from a fledgling democracy toward a dictatorship.

Not surprisingly Donald J. Trump epitomizes the evil antagonist, presenting a facade he has developed over a lifetime. He lies so much and so often that one wonders if he even knows what truth is. His sense of decency is so shallow it hardly registers. His outrage at the slightest disagreement is so huge that followers fear crossing him. He cheats people out of payments for services rendered. He scorns loyalty. He thinks he is the only person of value.

Pretty obvious, isn’t it, that he so often come out on top? A fight with him is never fair. How could it be, given his makeup and the relative decency of most of his opponents.

The decent antagonist is easily bowled over by the non-decent one. There are steps She will never consider and there are no steps He won’t consider.

The decent woman headed for the parking space usually would not complain about being beaten by the aggressive pushy driver.

The unpaid contractor might realize he has no chance against the Trump machine, lawyers, and money.

One pays a penalty for being nice.

But there’s an even bigger penalty for denying one’s principles in order to gain an advantage.

Because then you’d have to live with being a person you wouldn’t like.

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Love/Hate

10/7/2024

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I love my phone, my tablet, and my computer.

I hate my phone, my tablet, and my computer.

Do we all have love/hate relationships with our electronic gadgets?

I am delighted to have a communication device that sits in my pocket and connects to the world anytime I feel like it. Or I can sit with it while waiting in a doctor’s office and play games. Or I can look up anything on the internet, perhaps searching for a nearby restaurant. Or, if I have a problem with my car, I can call for help. I’ve become so dependent on my phone that I’ll even return home to retrieve it if I’ve forgotten to take it with me.

It's a far cry from my younger days when a single phone for the entire family was an extravagance. The party line was always fun. One learned to hang up immediately if attempts to make a call found someone’s voice already emerging from the earpiece. Unless you were a nosy little kid. If you needed to phone someone and you were away from home, you searched for a special booth and hoped you had enough change to complete a call. I can still hear an operator interrupting the conversation instructing me to insert another 25 cents and cutting me off if I failed to do so. I remember my mother placing a long-distance call, which was handled by a series of operators who passed it through several points before hookup. It could take some time as the patches were constructed. Mom asked me to hold the phone and call her when the call went through. When an operator finally announced the call was about to be completed, I yelled to my mom. The operator said, “Please don’t scream at me, madam.”

All very nostalgic. And all a far cry from the current power we possess and is the only telecommunications so many of my fellow citizens have ever known.

So what’s not to like?

Well, for me, plenty.

When I was young and the phone rang, there would be interest in rushing to answer it which became the job of the family member located the nearest. If no one was home, only the caller would ever know a contact had been attempted. Now, unless I’ve misplaced the phone, every attempted contact is noted and the nearest person to answering is the only person near it—me! This has created in me, and I think many, many others, a need to enslave myself to the phone and give answering a call or text message priority over conversation with those I’m with.

But enslaving myself isn’t the only problem. In the early days my family rarely if ever received solicitation calls. Now we have a whole old word with a new meaning, “spam,” to categorize them. The other morning I decided to count the number of spam calls that arrived: 15! At least my phone warns me about most of them so I can avoid answering. But it’s distracting and maddening.

And this isn’t even considering the calls that are made in the hope I will say “yes” which can be recorded and used later to prove agreement to some nefarious scheme. There is genuine danger in the technology that now shapes our lives.

So there is much to love about the phone, but there is a lot to hate too.

Similarly with the computer. I have vivid recollections of all night vigils writing term papers on my trusty Royal typewriter. You know, that old fashioned thing where a hunt for a delete key would fetch no reward. There was a real penalty for a mistake, and on a page of text there was bound to be at least one. The solution was either to retype or use Whiteout followed by insertion of the corrected character(s). And don’t get me started on carbon paper.

The computer has really transformed writing. I don’t think it has improved it, but it definitely is easier. Of course, there is so much more for which computers are employed, from composing music to generating art. Now where will AI lead? It’s hard to imagine life without that amazing device.

Not surprisingly, there are penalties. Rivaling the phone, one receives, via email, solicitation after solicitation. You can elect to unsubscribe, but there are downsides to that. Often your request is ignored. Or there always is a danger that clicking on that lovely word “unsubscribe” you assume will free you will instead unleash a virus into your system.

So yes, I’m glad we live in a time of cell phones and faster and faster computers (and tablets), but dealing with the problems can be time consuming and really, really annoying.

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Vice-Presidents

It's Not a Fair Fight

Love/Hate

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