Tales from Walmart, Episode 1

An old lady and her husband walk into the store and, when I find them, they are looking at laptop computers. This is always a harrowing experience since, no offense meant to my older friends, the elderly (at least in this area) have proven resilient to being educated about the workings of computers. This is an unfortunate state of affairs for two reasons. Firstly, one should never be afraid or even apathetic about learning new things. Too often people hide behind the excuse of being "too old" to learn and even, to some degree, that it is acceptable to be ignorant about technology because they're "just no good with it." I find this unusual because no one ever boasts about being ignorant about anything else, but I hear this all too often in the electronics department. People wear their technological ignorance out in the open without shame. Not that they should be ashamed of it, of course, but it should certainly be something they should be excited to overcome. Knowledge is its own reward, after all. Secondly, when you're looking to purchase something, you should never be completely ignorant about it. This puts you at the mercy of the salesperson who, at best, knows nothing about your needs or what you want to help you make the right decision and, at worst, is looking to eke as much money out of you as possible.

So, this old lady is looking at laptops and I approach fully expecting to begin my usual Computers 101 class. However, when I approach and ask her if she needs anything, she surprises me by asking: "Is this the only quad-core processor you have?"

I am relatively blown away by the question. Usually my older customers don't even know what a processor is, let alone a "quad-core processor." At this point, I am cautiously optimistic and I inform her that it is not, but it is probably the cheapest one and she would be looking to spend another $100 to $200 more for the next option up. She seems thoughtful about this answer for a moment before saying:

"Oh, ok. I really need a quad-core processor. I play a lot of Farmville."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. My immediate thought was, "I wasn't aware you needed a computer to play Farmville. Can't you run that on a graphing calculator?"

A One-Party System

Ok, I haven't written in awhile. I've been busy with my thesis and work and gaming and having my computer blow up and upgrading my aunt's computer and gaming on that and drawing and writing other things for fun.

So yeah, I've been busy.

But tonight is election night here in the US and I just watched Obama absolutely sweep the floor with Mitt Romney. I honestly did not expect that. Now, it's not that I thought Romney was better than Obama in any way shape or form. As far as I'm concerned, they both would have continued our gradual and disappointing road to ruin, just in different directions (though not as different as you might imagine). It was the landslide that surprised me. I honestly thought it would be a closer race than it was, that people were at least a little fed up with Obama--I at least thought they would have to wait until the next day to determine a winner...but they'd made the call by the time I got home from work at 10 p.m. Obama by a landslide.

I was a bit surprised when I first read the announcement. Did this mean that people were HAPPY with Obama? But when I stopped to think about it for awhile, it made perfect sense...and I believe it is the start of a trend.

People weren't happy with Obama. They were disenfranchised with the Republican party.

For years now, Republicans have been fed up with Obama. A lot of them, I believe, didn't like him simply because he was a Democrat. They'd been raised to hate people with Ds in front of their names, after all. But those of us with legitimately conservative leanings knew Obama was just growing the government, pushing the budget to its breaking point, and not really pushing any of the legitimate liberal talking points (drug legalization, gay marriage, whatever).

But there was a more deep rooted issue at the heart of just about every Republican in the US. They were disappointed in their party. They'd watched George W. Bush push forward budgets that were every bit as liberal as Clinton and his ilk. They watched him tread on their individual rights and continue to make mistake after mistake after mistake. Republicans had expected--were raised--to hate a Democratic president. But it'd been so long since they'd had a candidate that they could legitimately get behind.

This election was no different. Romney was a party boy through and through, the sort of talking head and expensive suit that we'd seen a hundred hundred times. Now, more than ever, the Republicans had wanted something different, someone that would shake up the tree. They wanted a Ron Paul, they wanted a Chris Christie. They wanted something that could wow and dazzle them like Obama did with the Democrats.. But all they got was another politician.

In the past, there'd been a mentality of voting for the "lesser of two evils," but the Obama administration saw a sharp upturn in voter involvement and outrage. The Tea Party, whatever you may think of it personally, was an amazing display--people actually getting involved in the system, a downturn in apathy. People wanted real change, real progress towards THEIR ideals, not the ideals that big wigs in Washington, with no real connection to the public, thought were their ideals.

This began a clear splintering of the Republican party. While you certainly had your old apologists, those who touted the party line because it was all they knew or they believed it was still effective, you also began to see an upturn in these Tea Party types who, for the most part, were radical righters. Now, I don't say radical in the fashion that they bombed buildings or slurred hate speech every chance they got. The reports of the Tea Party rallies being hot beds of hatred and biggotry were flat out lies. I went to one of these events and I felt comfortable and safe. But they ARE radical in that they want the Republican party line, the traditional party line, to be pushed without compromise. One could call them super Republicans.

At the same time, a third group of Republicans (or I suppose it would be safer to call them conservatives) began to gather more steam. The Libertarians began to gain favor with younger Republicans who were savvy in the fiscal and economical aspect of Republicanism but maybe felt like the government shouldn't be involved in social aspects of our every day life. Libertarianism is, to put it simply, fiscal conservancy with a dash of liberal social policy. This is an over simplification, of course. Libertarianism doesn't preach for gay marriage or whatever, it just calls for a smaller, less involved government--a government that has no place making social decisions.

There are, of course, other splinter groups within the Republican party, all based on important bullet points in Republican policy: war, immigration, economy, social policy, whatever. Every single bullet point seemed to splinter people more and more away from the party.

Now, this is both good and bad. It's good because it shows a free-thinking public that is capable of making its own decisions. For every Rush Limbaugh blindly touting the party line, even when it makes absolutely no sense in a sane and rational modern world, you also have one Jason Lewis who actively questions everything about his own party.

However, we saw the first signs of what I predict to be a trend that is a major downfall of this split. Obama's landslide victory over Romney shouldn't have come as a surprise to me. I knew about this splintering of the Republican party. I was one such person who turned away from the party line and steadfastly refused to vote Republican. I should have seen this coming. We currently live in a two-party system. You can fancy it up however you want, but we will never in my lifetime have a third-party president. The president has always been and will always be either Democrat or Republican.

But what happens when the Republican party essentially becomes a third party? Well, we're going to have a whole lot of Democrat presidents, that's what.

Think about it like this. Say you're in a room with 100 people and, come dinner time, it's decided that the group will order a (really, really large) pizza. For whatever reason, the pizza can only have one topping and the topping with the most votes will be what the group orders. Fifty people want peppermint ice cream pizza and fifty people want hot fudge pizza.

Naturally, a fight breaks out. The peppermint ice cream people can't even fathom a pizza with hot fudge topping, while the hot fudge people start calling the peppermint ice cream people idiots. This goes on for awhile until, after an hour or so, a chunk of the hot fudge group stops and says, "...wait a minute, hot fudge pizza? That shit would be AWFUL!" So they change their vote. Twenty people decide on the good old fashioned pepperoni, ten people want sausage, five people are boring and want just plain cheese, and the last five people steadfastly refuse to admit that hot fudge pizza is a horrible idea. It's tradition (of the last hour). So, when the time comes to vote, what happens?

Everyone eats peppermint ice cream pizza because the first group remains unified.

That's what's going to happen with our two-party system, I fear. The Democrats are going to remain unified in their core values while the Republicans are splintered over theirs. We're going to have the equivalent of a half dozen or so third parties and one major party that will win EVERYTHING.

Now, to be clear, I don't think this splintering of the Republican party is a bad thing. I think it shows a natural evolution of thought. Much of what the Republican party stands on is based in old traditions, particularly religious. Say what you will, but these traditions have no place in the government (maybe not even in our modern society in some cases). The fact that we have a major government party continuing to say that a man marrying another man is wrong is just...silly in my opinion. Personal opinion aside, what government institution has a right to tell us who we can and cannot marry?

But I digress.

What is the solution to this problem? Well, honestly, I don't think there is a solution. In discussion the issue with some of my (liberal) associates, I mostly received hopeful praise for the party. They believed that this was the start of the Republican party cutting itself free from the sort of stagnancy that had been holding it back for so many years, the warhawks, the religious nutjobs, etc. I don't necessarily disagree, but the problem with this is that those people are voters. They'll still be voting for the party line candidates and it still leaves us with a Democrat president, perhaps even with no one in Congress or the Senate to check him (or her). This means we're going to have a one party system and an ever-expanding government with nothing to stop it.