2024 Word Problem of Politics
Problem: Trump in 2024 (a little foreshadowing, this is the only problem I’m ever go- ing to address in these rhetorical weekly staff meetings until I get a job)Word Problem: I don’t have enough words or mental energy to explain the prob- lem with that much empathy or delicately, but that’s my personal problem to figure out.But the essential problem is that the psychology of political correctness tends to not view reality as a series of never ending binary choices, as a psychology it is in the habit of turning everything into some kind of shade of grey or color of the rainbow or college lecture nobody really cares about.Here are examples currently floating around:Economy = debt ceiling, inflation, default; and endless yada yada yada about those five words.Binary solution to this word problemEconomy = Individual people either do or do not have money to buy something because individual people either do or do not have a job that puts money either in or out of their bank account.1How is that a solution?It’s a K-I-S-S to the average person that might work in a Union hall somewhere in 2024. It works for other words too- Gender = sex, pride, transgender, identity, rights, society and a whole lot of yada yada yada problems. (And yes people have yada yada yada sex be- fore, Seinfeld reference is done on purpose for those Gen Xers who enjoy pop culture references)Binary solution
Gender = Sex People have that’s either good or bad or sometimes some other shade of grey. Or people don’t have sex. In other words people are either celibate or not celibate in a consensual way.
People either don’t think that much and don’t say that much about what it means to be heterosexual or lgbtqia or they think and say a lot about it. People are either parents and had to go through a process of getting a birth certificate. Or they are not parents and have not gone through that kind of process.
All of this are personal family decisions in which laws are passed or not passed.
The rhetorical word problem of “Gender assigned at birth” is problematic. I am one of those non parents who have not gone through that process before, but I’m also fairly certain that those certificates are not like multiple choice options on a test of some kind or assigned seats in school. It’s not like a doctor walks in and goes “the calendar says its May 28th, but we can just fill out another date and time if you want to, we can make this baby’s birthday August 88th or something else if we want to.” (That’s a joke btw, but if something like that ever becomes something that happens I highly suggest having the next kid at a different hospital)
My point is that some things can’t just be made up and there is nothing wrong with expressing some binary logic sometimes.Cars are either stick shift or automatic and have either two pedals or three. But the wheels on a car can only go in binary directions, forward or back- ward. A manual car with a clutch is either in a gear or in neutral it can’t be in two gears at once. Planes are either in the air and sky or on the ground. There are civilians and people serving in the armed forces.Voters will either vote for somebody or not vote for somebody. People will either Vote or not Vote. Campaigns either get donations or don’t get donations and an interest group either supports or doesn’t support a candidate. I admit there are many different shades of wins and losses in this game be- tween the two political parties of Democrats and Republicans but the binary rhetoric of this paragraph still kind of works.Because a sports team either wins or loses and is either on offense or defense and either scores or does not score some kind of point. Gamblers will either win or lose money resulting in more or less money going in or out of their bank account.
Get the Picture Solution
The main problem is that political correctness makes it difficult to see the numbers of the election clearly. Percentages have a way of getting confusing and irritating in the world of politics because even though getting 90% of a subset of the population is fantastic, if that subset of a population is only 8% of the total population then its really only like getting 7 point some- thing out of a 100.But even though 38% and 44% is a lot less than 90%. That 38% and 44% represents a higher percentage of the total population 35% and 32% and results in more votes.
This is from the CNN Exit poll. Black Women make up 8% of the respondents or 1247, and Biden got 90% of that vote, which is 1122 respondents in the Biden column.
White women make up 32% of the slice of the pie which is 4988 people, and 44% of that vote is 2195 respondents in the Biden column, which is roughly twice the amount even though it is half as much as a "Percent" because 45 times 2 is 90.
And 2195 > 1122