I think there are political lessons we can learn from road rage.
My sister or my brother-in-law once told me about one case of road rage. Apparently someone changed lanes without checking their blind spot. That's what I believe most people mean when they say someone "cut them off". Well the man who was "cut off" took an irrational level of offense at this and so when the couple in the lane changing car came to park near a restaurant, they had been followed. They got out and were heading inside when this crazy many yelled at them about what they did and took a hammer to their car's tail-lights. I'm guessing that was his sociopathic way of saying, "this is what your driving decisions should have gotten you".
I was the target of road rage once myself. While driving through a busy urban section of interstate highway at about seven or eight miles per hour over the speed limit apparently someone behind me took offense that I was in the fast lane and not going as fast as he wanted to go. So when he finally managed to weave his way through the crowded and slower moving lanes to get ahead of me he decided to try and teach me a lesson in driver courtesy. He slowed down enough that my cruise-control had me less than a car's length from him and then he slammed his breaks. I was barely able to avoid having my SUV run his little sport coup over and I honked my horn in disgust at his stupidity.
The thought crossed my mind that justice might well have been served if I had crushed his little over-priced toy, but then I would have been little better than him right?
So what does road rage have to do with elections? Simple, elections like all bad decisions have consequences but due to the nature of human variability, the timing and severity of those consequences can be less than certain.
There are going to be crazy people like the two road ragers I described above who attempt to force their own subjective interpretations of justice onto things. And in so doing they end up compounding the decisions they objected to with bad ones of their own.
The lane cut off in our current time is the ACA otherwise known as Obamacare. It was passed without a single Republican vote and no serious effort was made to get a Republican vote. The proper legislative procedures were bypassed with parliamentary tricks when the people's will against the ACA was clearly expressed by the election of a moderate Republican senator from one of the bluest states in the country. This made it so they didn't have the votes in the Senate needed to pass the ACA using regular procedures, so they found a way around both the procedures and the people's expressed will. Thus they performed the legislative equivalent of cutting people off with a sloppy lane change.
Now it should be of little wonder that many wish Obamacare ill will, or that the public in general still hate it. It should come as no shock that Republicans work so hard to stop the implementation of a law that was passed in spite of them and with a deaf ear to Americans in general. What political party anywhere in the world would give up a fight against something most of their nation's people hate as much as they do?
That is not the crazy man with the hammer bashing in the tail lights or the deranged driver testing another's breaks ironically in the name of driver courtesy. That's natural consequences that are relatively independent of human variability.
The crazy people with hammers and ironic senses of courtesy, those are anyone who intentionally brings suffering or reason for concern onto others in the name of what they believe should justly be the consequences of elections.
Barack Obama is well known for saying the words, "elections have consequences", but apparently he doesn't understand the nature of consequences in human society. They're not always what you think they should be and if you try to force the result, well now your the man with the hammer.
But wait Eddie. How can the guy who cut us off with unwanted legislation also be the man with the hammer? Wasn't Ted Cruise the guy with the hammer when he shut down the government? Why yes. He was, that is if he was in fact the guy who shut down the government. But was he? Does one senator really have the power to do that? Okay so he had friends. A group described by their opponents as a "small group of extremists". So does a "small group of extremists" have the power to do that? Can one? Well no. Not unless one of them is the President of the United States.
Now I'm not saying that Barack Obama is a member of the Tea Party. What I'm saying is that Barack Obama shut down the government in the name of his own very subjective view of justice. He was in fact the guy with the hammer. And the real cutting off was when the American people elected him. He's now offended that we're not getting all the consequences he thinks those elections should have gotten us.
He's the man with the hammer and through his own actions he is setting himself up for a fall. We can keep our hammers put away. Waiting for the police will work just fine in this case.
My sister or my brother-in-law once told me about one case of road rage. Apparently someone changed lanes without checking their blind spot. That's what I believe most people mean when they say someone "cut them off". Well the man who was "cut off" took an irrational level of offense at this and so when the couple in the lane changing car came to park near a restaurant, they had been followed. They got out and were heading inside when this crazy many yelled at them about what they did and took a hammer to their car's tail-lights. I'm guessing that was his sociopathic way of saying, "this is what your driving decisions should have gotten you".
I was the target of road rage once myself. While driving through a busy urban section of interstate highway at about seven or eight miles per hour over the speed limit apparently someone behind me took offense that I was in the fast lane and not going as fast as he wanted to go. So when he finally managed to weave his way through the crowded and slower moving lanes to get ahead of me he decided to try and teach me a lesson in driver courtesy. He slowed down enough that my cruise-control had me less than a car's length from him and then he slammed his breaks. I was barely able to avoid having my SUV run his little sport coup over and I honked my horn in disgust at his stupidity.
The thought crossed my mind that justice might well have been served if I had crushed his little over-priced toy, but then I would have been little better than him right?
So what does road rage have to do with elections? Simple, elections like all bad decisions have consequences but due to the nature of human variability, the timing and severity of those consequences can be less than certain.
There are going to be crazy people like the two road ragers I described above who attempt to force their own subjective interpretations of justice onto things. And in so doing they end up compounding the decisions they objected to with bad ones of their own.
The lane cut off in our current time is the ACA otherwise known as Obamacare. It was passed without a single Republican vote and no serious effort was made to get a Republican vote. The proper legislative procedures were bypassed with parliamentary tricks when the people's will against the ACA was clearly expressed by the election of a moderate Republican senator from one of the bluest states in the country. This made it so they didn't have the votes in the Senate needed to pass the ACA using regular procedures, so they found a way around both the procedures and the people's expressed will. Thus they performed the legislative equivalent of cutting people off with a sloppy lane change.
Now it should be of little wonder that many wish Obamacare ill will, or that the public in general still hate it. It should come as no shock that Republicans work so hard to stop the implementation of a law that was passed in spite of them and with a deaf ear to Americans in general. What political party anywhere in the world would give up a fight against something most of their nation's people hate as much as they do?
That is not the crazy man with the hammer bashing in the tail lights or the deranged driver testing another's breaks ironically in the name of driver courtesy. That's natural consequences that are relatively independent of human variability.
The crazy people with hammers and ironic senses of courtesy, those are anyone who intentionally brings suffering or reason for concern onto others in the name of what they believe should justly be the consequences of elections.
Barack Obama is well known for saying the words, "elections have consequences", but apparently he doesn't understand the nature of consequences in human society. They're not always what you think they should be and if you try to force the result, well now your the man with the hammer.
But wait Eddie. How can the guy who cut us off with unwanted legislation also be the man with the hammer? Wasn't Ted Cruise the guy with the hammer when he shut down the government? Why yes. He was, that is if he was in fact the guy who shut down the government. But was he? Does one senator really have the power to do that? Okay so he had friends. A group described by their opponents as a "small group of extremists". So does a "small group of extremists" have the power to do that? Can one? Well no. Not unless one of them is the President of the United States.
Now I'm not saying that Barack Obama is a member of the Tea Party. What I'm saying is that Barack Obama shut down the government in the name of his own very subjective view of justice. He was in fact the guy with the hammer. And the real cutting off was when the American people elected him. He's now offended that we're not getting all the consequences he thinks those elections should have gotten us.
He's the man with the hammer and through his own actions he is setting himself up for a fall. We can keep our hammers put away. Waiting for the police will work just fine in this case.
