I believe there is a simple but paradoxical tendency for elections to matter less when they are as passionate and competitive as today’s US federal elections. When the populace is divided into such large camps, the winner cannot afford to really piss off the disappointed near-50% that voted for someone else. With so many people in opposition, a conciliatory status-quo-conserving approach is almost certain. Winning with a huge majority mandate, on the other hand, would permit the winner to act more dismissively toward the minority voters’ concerns. After all, there are so few of them.
Ironic, isn’t it? According to this theory, the more polarized an election, the “better”. The more different the candidates try to appear, the more similar they would be forced to act.
Actually it’s not so surprising. A modern nation has tremendous inertia, which makes it impractical for even an extreme candidate to make significant changes. Think back to the most “way out” political situation you have lived under, and consider how much has your own life had consequentially changed as it came and went? Barely, if at all, I bet. Politicians just cannot screw things up that much.
This is probably the common wisdom that leads to generally declining voting turnout.
Until this current episode involving the little brat, I have rarely set foot in hospitals. (Visiting Juimiin’s various prior hospital labs does not really count, as I did not experience anything other than rushing through hallways and trembling in decrepit elevators.) Now, having clocked probably 40+ hours within Toronto East General, I get a little better sense of significance of the enterprise.
While waiting for the Eric-removal surgery to begin, for example, there was a “code pink” (neonatal resuscitation) alarm that went off in a neighbouring room. A swarm of nurses and onlookers ran, literally ran, to the baby in trouble. No developments were visible from my vantage point, and it sank in that these people, this place, deals with genuine life and actual death all the time. My own humble life’s work and play seemed so pale suddenly. (One might say that my flying and shooting hobbies place me into life & death situations too, but these are under our control, and subject to lots of judgement and training. People get hurt sometimes, but they are “other people”.) A few minutes later that troubled kid started to cry, signalling a happy end to the crisis. The attendants wiped off their sweat and went back to their regular duties. I sat there with a tear in my eye.
Another development over the last few months was a growing sense of adulthood, or more specifically, losing another childishness. After having attended classes, watched videos, monitored bodily changes, sat ring-side during the C-section surgery, I have been observing a whole new side of human physiology that even young adults find as icky and mysterious as a snickering eight-year-old does. The routine mundaneness of its raw messiness have taken away all sense of judgement, embarrassment or shame. It just is.
The brat was paroled from hospital on Saturday morning, and we are spending the first night all together. The experience so far has inspired a modification of the refrain of this old song:
Little brat, little brat, let me sleep
(Not by the sounds of my screamy weep weep)
Sunday mixed a bit of everything in a single day. There was morning and night drama with the two home humans, and daytime delight with guns and airplanes and friends.
The excellent RA Centre in Ottawa hosted an IPSC match yesterday. While Juimiin and I competed at such a match a few years ago by taking the 3-hour drives to/from Ottawa, possession of C-GXRP and an instrument rating makes such day trips more practical and stimulating.
The weather was simply awful. A strong cold front was rushing through the area, with howling (>100 km/h) and turbulent winds at altitude, plenty of icy cloud and drenching rain. Very few little airplanes were flying there that day. Both landings were very challenging, but somehow I and two fellow flying humans made smooth touchdowns after all the ruckus. While nothing quite like Roy Batty’s I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe lines, we had our share of neat sights:
- the mental images created by an Ottawa area air traffic controller upon arrival to his sector, describing the crappy weather there at the time, with an undertone of “are you sure you want to come here?”
- gently landing at Ottawa on a water-covered runway, gently slipping and hydroplaning, while somehow staying on the centre line
- watching big jets land and take off on the same runway: huge plumes of water foam trailed them
- fifteen men of widely varying ages, shapes, and skills playing with handguns at the IPSC match; no lady competed in our time slot
- the sudden clearing of Ottawa skies after the match, with the front well off to the East, leaving just patches of pickerel-coloured cloud masses
- flying toward Toronto as the night fell, with the sunlight illuminating cloud layers above and below us
- weirdly sloping cloud banks that produced illusions of banking
- with night having arrived, our strobe lights showing flashes of flowing ice crystals we flew amongst, like hundreds of bright little bugs
- glimpses of the Oshawa and Toronto area ground, when the clouds below started to part
- the airplane instrument panel, shaking enough from the turbulence to make its visual scan barely possible
- the clock, after figuring out that it took us almost twice as long to return than to get to Ottawa, because of winds
- home sweet home