Every Vote Counts in Taney County

   There are 50,000+ people residing in Taney County.  Around 36,000 are Registered Voters.  Around 24,000 usually vote.  Taney County's 19,000 votes are far less than 1% of the total Missouri State votes. A quick stats check for prior elections confirms that it doesn't make any difference who is the candidate...all Republicans get about 19,000 votes.  If Sadam Huisein had been the Republican candidate for Secretary of State instead of Jay Ashcroft, well, he might have only gotten 18,000 votes...anyway.

     It's almost "COVID ELECTION" time.  Will there be notable changes in Taney County's rigid voting pattern?  Will a smaller or greater number of Republicans/Democrats show up or successfully register their vote by either "mail-in" or "absentee" ballot?  My speculation is that there will be virtually no change in the pattern, either as to vote count or party preference.  

     I have watched the local populous reaction to the onset of COVID presence.  Our County was slower than the Country as a whole to react.  (This would likely be true in the event of an alien encounter....our County is either existential or primitive, depending on your perspective.)  As the threat reality sunk in, there was a brief period of self-imposed shut-down, seemingly more pronounced than for the country as a whole.  (Those running "existential software" behavior profiles, react strongly to immanent threats because they have less history of adaptive behavior.)  As the threat was publicly digested and contextualized, almost exactly 72% of the populous concluded that the threat was "fake news" and disregarded all "fragile recommendations"  (There were virtually no masks at Walmart on the 4th of July)  Then, as COVID stats turned local, Republican leadership reversed their position and mandated a "mask only" public.  Almost instantly our monolithic community shifted to almost total mask compliance, adapting a conviction that "with mask", life had returned to normal.  

     Taney County has returned to normal, albeit with masks.  There will be virtually no absentee voting and the election results will look very much like 2016.  There will be no voter fraud.  Indeed, the Republican leadership initiative, mid-COVID to sway the mail-in/absentee count by making it complicated to vote absentee, will prove to have been unnecessary.  Yes, all of the, I presume, purposeful nonsense regarding multiple ballot applications, confused instructions, contradictory notarization requirements, etc. will prove pointless.  If the Taney County Clerk publishes the number of absentee-mail-in ballots, it will likely be less than 1000, virtually all from the less than 5000 Democratic voters.

In Taney County, we will forever be in a "Republican State of Mind"

I am a Republican....so I guess I will vote for Trump

You will be wrong sometimes.

The key is to not stay wrong.

An unacknowledged error is an error.

An acknowledged error is an education.

A BLM "Observation" from Douglas Murray

In the video, Sasha Johnson was dressed in Black Panther-esque mock paramilitary garb, which Murray surmised was an attempt to look like a “militia leader”, concluding that she wants her followers to “look like hard, trained troops ready to take on the establishment and the police”.

“I think that this is, to a great extent, play-acting,” Murray said.

“She’s play-acting revolutionaryism… Everything about the way she presents herself and the way she and her friends speak and present themselves is as people who want to play-act as revolutionaries.”

The Madness of Crowds author went on to mockingly describe the “young white woman standing to the left of our revolutionary Che Guevara guerrilla leader”.

He said that the young woman “looks ever so slightly nervous when her militia leader invites everyone to do the Black Power salute. This sort of young, white, ginger-haired girl for a moment has a flicker in her eyes that maybe I’ve fallen in with the wrong crowd that my mummy warned me about.”

He went on to warn that though the figures in the viral video may be play-acting, “there are always some who are willing to take the play-acting a stage further and I hope that the radical left in the UK, which has many supporters in the Labour Party among other places, remember that when they lie about this country… they ought to remember that there are people like this radicalised young woman who do seem to want to push things to the next level.”

Too Damn Far

     I am watching media coverage of yet another "police/black man" death in Rochester.  As these "questionable death" events arise in increasing number, my liberal identity is being challenged severely.  My issue is not that I have lesser empathy for these horrific injustices.  My issue is that I see an escalation of power within the black community that I fear may lead to widespread social chaos, such that it will be un-containable. 

     No coalition of American Blacks have, until now, mobilized sufficient revolution energy to challenge "institutional governance"....but this, always standing, coalition has never had half of the population trying to defeat Trump in an immanent election....an election they cannot win without Black Coalition support.  BLM finds itself in an unparalleled partnership with a "liberal media" during a time when "liberal media" is obsessed with defeating Trump.  I hope the longstanding grievances of "Black America" do not, during this unique time, commandeer the institutional power of the fourth estate and ride it pell mell into the gates of  Civil War II.

It's starting to look like that's not enough!

       Today, a 70+ "undecided voter" was quoted in a Washington Post editorial, as having said, "It’s got to be more than that [Trump] is the worst person on Earth".  My sense is that this is the pivotal campaign question.  Yes, a staggering number of Americans agree that Trump has an extreme personality disorder. Will this, almost indisputable, fact carry the day in the voting booth. My sense is no!  "It's about the economy, stupid", is Trump's trump.

     Current Americans have neither the history nor the imagination to act on a dystopian forecast.  Damn few believe the exaggerated Trump warnings of Socialist chaos, and only an equally small few believe that Mitch and Bill and Lindsey would let Trump go totally psycho and try to hang Schiff and Pelosi on the West Lawn. 

     When it's all marked and counted, very likely most will choose a tomorrow that they believe will look much like yesterday. After all, Trump was mentally ill 4 years ago (indeed 20 years ago) and so what.....here we all are, just pulling into Sonic with good plastic.