Where Fun Comes to Die

Most election years I vote Libertarian, because that’s the sort of cranky weirdo that I am. And if I happen to be living in a swing state, people invariably tell me that I’m throwing my vote away and that I’ll be sorry if the Republicans (who I generally like even less than the Democrats) win. This is pernicious nonsense.

It bothers me when people talk about how close their particular state is when they’re making up their mind about how to vote, as if their individual vote could change the election. It can not. The odds against an election coming down to a single vote, even in a very close race, are astronomical. And even if it did come down to a single vote, our election systems aren’t finely tuned enough to detect the true winner at that margin. There will always be miscountings, smudged ballots, Diebold chicanery, and other such snafus. If an election is truly within a single vote, there’s no way our system is precise enough to say who actually won. 

Voting isn’t about personally making a difference. Your individual vote will not, and can not, make a difference. But your individual vote will state your preferences about who should lead the country and where it should go. Getting the opportunity to express yourself like that is a very precious right.

Here’s an analogy that I think is useful. Let’s say that Congress is considering a new bill to bail out the perverted arts to the tune of $30 billion. And let’s say for the sake of argument that I hate this bill. I write a letter to my Congressman telling him to oppose the bill, I write an angry letter to my local newspaper expressing my opinions, and I put a “Honk if you find Richard Mapplethorpe’s sadomasochistic nudes less compelling than his technically accomplished floral still lives” sign up in my yard. If the bill doesn’t pass, it will be because the bill faced opposition from a sector of society including me. But there’s no plausible set of circumstances under which my individual opposition could be the deciding factor. 

Voting is not a long-shot attempt to personally pick the President. A ballot is not a lottery ticket offering a one-in-a-billion chance to be in charge of the Illuminati’s President-picking department. What it is is a chance to express oneself and have your voice be heard. The only time a vote is ‘wasted’ is when somebody votes for their second-choice candidate out of the bizarre delusion that they need to vote tactically. 

(For the record, this year I am voting Obama.)

As most of us likely learned in grade school, the U.S. government is built on a system of checks and balances.  Each of the three branches of government — legislative, executive, and judicial — serves as a check on the others.  It could be said, not unreasonably, that the people have their own “check” on the government: amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  If the people don’t like the laws passed by the legislature, as interpreted by the courts, the people (through their representatives — an imperfect proxy, of course) have the ultimate authority: they can simply change the rules.  The Supreme Court can overturn any law passed by the legislature, but it can’t do a damn thing about what the Constitution says.

Amendments are serious business, which is why they’re also seriously difficult to pass.  First two thirds of Congress must vote in favor of the proposed amendment.  After it passes in Congress, it’s put to the vote of the states, a full THREE QUARTERS of which must vote in favor of the amendment.  Clearly, the Constitution is far more important, and far more powerful, than run-of-the-mill legislation.

Which brings us to the land of fruits and nuts, my strange and beautiful home state of California.  I learned something new this year: to amend the California constitution, you need only a simple majority.  51%.  Or, I suppose, 50.0001%, or whatever is the equivalent of a single vote tipping it over 50%.  Not a two-thirds supermajority or a three-quarters super-duper-majority.  Just a plain old majority.  The exact same majority you need to enact any old law.

So I’m just wondering: if you can change the constitution just as easily as you can make or change any other law, what’s the point of having a constitution?  Seriously, I’m wondering.

California has a Proposition to amend the constitution to state that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”  According to some polls, 10% of voters are still undecided.

The first step for undecided voters is deciding whether your preference is voting for rights or for the greater good.  If you believe that marriage is an inalienable basic civil liberty, then there should be marriage equality.  If you believe that marriage is something we permit because it benefits our society and to the extent it ceases to benefit our society we will cease to endorse marriage, then you need to examine how you think same sex marriage would benefit and/or harm society.

Although the general rule seems to be that people have the right to marry, we have traditionally denied people the right to marry anyone of their choosing in certain circumstances.  In many states there is a minimum age requirement for marriage.  In some states, certain blood relatives cannot marry, presumably even though they are consenting adults and are past child-bearing years.  People may not marry again if they already have one spouse.  Why do we have these restrictions on marriage?  Because society thinks it is bad for business.  Our forefathers made the judgment that in those marriages, the harm exceeded the benefits such that society would not condone them.

Same sex marriage has been traditionally disallowed, but just because our forefathers thought the harm outweighed the cost doesn’t mean it is true.  Anti-miscegenation laws were also presumably based on a cost/benefit analysis, but most would agree now that the benefit to allowing interracial marriage in our society outweighs the harms.  The same could be true of same sex marriage, in fact opponents of the amendment cite Massachusetts and several other countries as positive test cases for same sex marriage.  Same sex couples in California have been participating in de facto marriages, what would be the harm of making it official?

It is also possible that the harm for same sex marriage outweighs the benefits.  The California Supreme Court in the In re Marriage case relied on the rights based argument and so did not perform a detailed cost/benefit analysis, however the gay population is estimated at less than 5% of the population.  Benefits to that small a portion would have to be great to counteract even a small harm to the other 95% of the population.  Proponents of the amendment point to allowing no-fault divorces (which some blame for the current divorce rate of 50%) and allowing unwed mothers on welfare (which some argue has led to the sharp increase in the number of welfare babies) as real world examples of the unintended consequences that laws aimed at a small percentage of the population can have overall.  Proponents of the amendment also point to the fact that under California law, same sex couples in civil unions will still have all the same legal rights as married couples.  Additionally, sexual orientation will still be a protected class such that no law can discriminate against a person because of his or her sexual orientation in California.

People complain about how much time, money, and effort are being put into this debate.  To paraphrase a Chicago law professor opposed to certain campaign finance limits, with something this important, I would like to see more time, money, and effort spent on both sides of the issue.  There is a great deal of uncertainty about what effects governmental endorsement of same sex marriage will have in the long term.   The only thing that is certain is that same sex marriage will have some effect; the only question is in what ways and to what extent.  All things considered, I sort of admire the indecision of that 10% of the population in the face of such lasting potential consequences.

Prognostication is always a tricky game. But right now, it appears that Barack Obama is almost certain to be the next President of the U.S.A. Unless he marries Bill Ayers in a nationally-televised Muslim ceremony, it seems that he’s got a lock. McCain’s done a fine job of exciting a party that wasn’t predisposed to like him, but he’s turning off independents in the process and the Republican party is losing ground badly in voter registration.

McCain’s recent problems with independents and the tone of his campaign have got me thinking about Cass Sunstein’s work on group polarization. The basic theory is that groups of like-minded individuals tend to adopt more extreme positions than the individuals would independently . People in groups of conservatives will tend to become more conservative, people in groups of liberals will tend to become more liberal and so on. 

I’m not as up to speed on the literature as I probably should be, but it seems to me like one of the natural side effects of this phenomenon would be that as group opinion hardens, a group will tend to shed its more moderate members through self-selection or outright expulsion. As the group gets smaller and smaller its beliefs will become more and more intense, until all you’ve got left is a small, intensely devoted core. 

This theory would certainly seem to explain for some of John McCain’s recent problems with his own supporters. Who wants to associate themselves with yahoos like these?  The base, meanwhile, is busily casting out heretics when it ought to be making converts.

Although I certainly don’t want McCain to win the election (libertarians hated McCain before it was cool), it can’t be good to have one of the two major political parties melting down so completely. We are at a time when the size and power of the federal government is about to expand on a massive scale. It would be nice to have a credible, intellectually vibrant opposition standing athwart history yelling ‘stop’ (or at least ‘slow down a bit’), and unfortunately, we don’t have anything of the sort. 

So what can be done? McCain could probably heal a lot of the damage by stressing civility and good sportsmanship for the rest of the campaign and sending Palin off to a nunnery. But that would entail giving up any hope of victory. I think McCain would rather face a glorious blowout loss than a noble forfeit (which, to be fair, is an entirely human and understandable instinct).

The system does have some capacity to correct itself. A few years in the wilderness will probably help the Republicans regain some of their appeal. Absolute power will begin to corrupt the Democrats absolutely. More importantly, absolute powerlessness will give the GOP some time to think about what it’s done wrong. But in order to regain its lost ground, the Republican party must have the capacity for honest self-examination and self-criticism. It’s an open question if the party can learn those virtues even as it shrinks towards critical mass.

It’s strange to hear the Republican presidential candidate speak of Russia as a very wealthy nation. It’s not that I disagree or anything, but it’s a jarring sentiment to hear from the Republican. It’s like hearing Yakov Smirnov boast of his homeland’s wealth and prestige, or seeing the Wolverines attending a peace conference. These truly are dark days.

Friends, we are less than a month away from the most pivotal election our country has seen in decades, and yet, I’ve heard nary a word from either major party’s presidential candidate about a crucial automotive issue that affects millions of average Americans on a day-to-day basis.

No, I’m not talking about gas prices, or our dependence on foreign oil, or the need for more efficient renewable energy resources, or global warming, or any of that.  I’m talking about something far more sinister: assholes who refuse to properly park their obnoxious cars.

There cannot be a day that goes by that I don’t drive past the “compact” section of a parking lot, only to see that at least 50% of the “compact” spaces are taken up by Humvees, Jeeps, Range Rovers, and minivans.  Look, I’m not gonna tell people what kind of car to buy.  You want to be that dick who can’t feel secure without 5 tons of metal to threaten the safety of everyone else on the road, well, you just go on with your bad self, girlfriend.  Drive that car like it’s never been driven before.  Terrorize old ladies in compact Oldsmobiles.  Take 60 seconds to get yourself up to proper merging speed on the freeway.  Honk your horn like a screeching hyena every time you see a girl under 40 years and 175 pounds.  But LEAVE MY GODDAMN PARKING SPACE ALONE!!

If these space whores actually had the smarts and the skill to maneuver their planet-sized killing machines into a “compact” spot — hell, even if there were no more than an inch of space on either side — No Problem.  Far as I’m concerned, you’re entitled to the entire space allotted you.  You might have to crawl out your back hatch to exit, but what fun is having an SUV if you never play around in all that unnecessary space?

But such thoughtfulness is not the strong suit of the Big Car Drivers.*  In fairness, they are far too important to be bothered with taking the extra 45 seconds it would take to maneuver their cars into a less imposing position.  And so, there she sits, brazenly slumping into an adjacent space, as though her bare existence were reason enough to flout the rules.  Occasionally you’ll see a Smart Car or a compact Hyundai meekly squeezing into the shrunken remains of the adjacent “compact” space, cowering in fear of the sheer towering bulk of the larger neighbor.

The more honest of these offenders don’t bother with even the appearance of attempted compliance.  Instead, they’ll stretch out their heavy tankers across two — sometimes even three! — parking spaces, as though to announce “yes, fair denizens of the Best Buy parking lot — I have arrived, and you may lay your offerings at my hubcaps.”  The arrogant felinity of this gesture communicates to other parkers the sheer superiority of the driver of the larger vehicle.

The problem here lies not in the fact that these vacuous folk are, by and large, an annoying and unsightly blight on the already less-than-sleek face of the American public.  Rather, it lies in the foundational dilemma underlying economic theory: scarcity.  Yes, I’ve often lamented the results of double-space gluttony, only to have my passenger-seat driver interject that it’s no matter, as I wouldn’t have gotten the space anyway; someone else would have.  What these space-hog apologists fail to realize, however, is that the space that would have been occupied by said someone else would now have been vacant, and if it had been taken by another, that other’s would-be space is then freed up in its place, and so on.  See?  It’s the trickle-down theory of parking.  Perfectly usable, valuable space is being wasted like so much leftover Chinese food.  I want to shake these drivers and ask them “what about the parking-spot-starved children in the Sudan??”

I call on Sens. McCain and Obama to tackle this key issue by announcing, for example, their support for legislation providing automatic reprieves for those convicted of vehicular vandalism, where such actions were justified by a parking violation of sufficiently egregious magnitude.  I can see the outpouring of support from previously undecided voters just imagining it.

*The observations in this post, it should be noted, are by no means strictly limited to vehicles of greater bulk.  In fact, just two days ago I was deterred from my first-choice parking spot by a nefariously-deposited Mazzerati (the drivers of which, by the way, are deserving of an entire post devoted to them).