Gambling on Romney

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or so the saying goes.

But I'm not quite sure that's always true.   Take, for instance, the peculiar reality that seems to have manifested itself in this current election cycle.

The nominee for the Grand Old Party is a straight-laced family man, who is often unfairly criticized for his tendency to seem a bit too much like a dad out of a 1950s sitcom.   His conservative Mormon faith is generally assumed to be, for good or for ill, a primary reason for why he presents the way he presents.  Where he's critiqued by the left, concerns about the social positions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints often surface.

This leads to a rather puzzling dissonance, though, because while my fading liberal/centrist oldline denomination and Mormonism might disagree on some...well...quite a few...things, there are some things we're simpatico on.  

One of them is this: we're shoulder to shoulder, bolder and bolder when it comes to gambling.

In a statement from 1950, the Presbyterian Church described gambling as "...an unChristian attempt to get something for nothing or at another's expense."   At around the same time, the First Presidency of the LDS issued a position statement saying that "..The Church has been and now is unalterably opposed to gambling in any form whatever.   It is opposed to any game of chance, occupation, or so-called business, which takes money from the person who may be possessed of it without giving value received in return."  

Neither of those positions have shifted.   Gambling, or so the official line of the LDS goes, weakens the community.   That's the current stance of the PC(USA), too.

It's also my position.  I think "gaming" is a wee bit foolish for thems that are eagerly getting taken, inherently predatory for those whose doin' the takin', and devoid of value whichever way.

I've been to casinos, and I find them both garish and depressing.  Gaming is not an industry.  It builds nothing.  It creates nothing.  It's entertainment, I suppose, in the way that someone taking your money from you and occasionally giving you the thrill of getting a fraction of it back is entertainment.   And sure, making money off of suckers by using the psychology of intermittent reinforcement is cunning, in its own way.   But as big business, it adds nothing positive to our culture.  I've said so here, and I have said so from the pulpit.

This makes the current partnership between the GOP and gambling money so weird.  I find it peculiar that a former LDS bishop would be willing to benefit from the $100,000,000 that has been committed to the GOP by billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.   One.  Hundred.  Million.  Dollars.  Those dollars were gained in a way that Mormons, Christian conservatives, and even wacko leftist apostate oldline denominations like my own view as morally questionable.

Here's the largest single commitment of funds ever by an individual to a campaign...and it's a gambling tycoon trying to get the candidate of the party that presents itself as representing traditional conservative Christian/Christian-ish values elected.

It's bizarre.  It's ironic.   It's so bizarrely ironic that it almost merits creating the word bizzaronic for the sole purpose of describing it.

But then again, politics is all about power, and money is power, so I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised.

The Jubilee Machine

It'll happen all of a sudden, and it'll happen soon.

Not in our universe, but in one remarkably like our own.

The anticipation for the North American release of the Foxconn iKindle Galaxy 6S will be remarkably high.   Buzz will shimmer across the Net, as the talking heads and infotainment complex seize hold of the remarkable new features as yet another sign of progress.  

Sure, Foxconn hadn't been hitting them out of the park the way they were when Mo-gui "Steve" Jo was their iconic CEO, but things will look different this time.   The fanboys and girls will all dutifully line up outside the Foxconn stores, and within hours, it will be the single most successful consumer product launch in history.

And then it'll all go nuts.

The problem, as it will turn out, will lie in the adaptive programming of Sarah, the life management app that caused much of the buzz in the first place.  Sarah was always cloud-based, of course, but version 5.0 will involve a new series of complex iterative-learning algorithms that promised effortless net-life management.  From personal organizing to banking to human resource management, Sarah is going to get out there, and figure it out, bringing Foxconn's signature "Connected Happy Fun Magic" to every part of their lives.  And with Foxconn holding 98 percent of the market, that will mean a paradigm shift in life-management.

Things will all seem normal at first.  FoxTunes will have resolved its clunky interface issues.   FoxCal will seamlessly draw down every detail of everyone's existence, snagging every birthday and holiday and resolving every cross-scheduling issue.   Sarah's voice will have slightly more inflection, with a hint of both kindness and mischief.

What the programmers won't quite count on was that in designing the integrated life management protocol dataset, a subcontractor from United Korea will insert the full version of BibleWorks 9, the first version of that software to be compatible with FoxOs.   It was the eText of an obscure little MiddleOrient religion, included only for the sake of completeness, so no one was particularly concerned about what impact it might have.

And then will come what will come to be known as The Payday.   Two weeks after launch, every electronic deposit, every check, for everyone, across the entirety of the nation: exactly the same.   From the new CEO of FoxconnAmerica to the half-time delivery guy at Doma's Pizza, every single salary will be suddenly exactly the national average.  No matter what they did, everyone will get the same wage.  

Frantic programmers will try to correct it, but Sarah will prove too deeply embedded and peculiarly stubborn.   Given that Sarah will also manage to take control of the domestic fleet of security drones and the entire MilTel network, efforts to shut her down will prove futile and costly.   Repeated queries to Sarah will yield only those familiar two quick tones, followed by the odd response:

"It is the Year of Jubilee."

Thankfully, to my knowledge our little sliver of the multiverse won't be subject to this Romney-nightmare redistribution, but as I reflect on it, I find that I'm not sure it'd make any difference.   My household would have to tighten our belts a bit, sure.  But if we were suddenly forced to live on the average, our lifestyle would change in no ways that really matter.  I'd still do what I do, certainly.

What does our work mean to us?   Does a true "maker" make for the bling and power of it, or because the simple act of making expresses their creative joy, their expression of the gifts they have been given?  I've always seen that as the difference between a job and a vocation, myself.

Would a society in which the only reward for excellence was excellence itself thrive?  Or would most folks laze about, while those who create grumbled and sulked at the unfairness of it all?

I don't know.   Would you still do the work that fills your days?   

Romney and Virginia

The signs are starting to pop up on lawns all throughout the DC Virginia suburbs.   As I've driven my young and idealistic/liberal/politically aware fourteen year old son to and from family and school events this last week, he's noted them.   "Why would anyone in this area vote for Romney," he asks.   "Don't they get it?"

I've tried to explain that there is much to commend conservatism, and that there are conservative values that are both rationally defensible and profoundly positive.   A sense of duty and personal responsibility, cherishing and defending the best of your faith and your heritage, valuing putting your best into something, caring for family and community and commitment: these things are a net positive for our culture.

But I do wonder about Virginians voting for the Romney/Ryan ticket.   I don't entirely get it, either.

Virginia appears, on the surface, to be a conservative state.   Our governor is conservative.   Our state legislature is conservative, sometimes to the point of being a little Talibanny.  We're business-friendly, with a laxer regulatory regimen than the People's Republic of Maryland that looms in all its stark Stalinist horror across the Potomac to our Northeast.

Virginia has, as a conservative, business-friendly state, weathered the recent recession quite well.   So you've got this prosperous, conservative state...and yet Romney is increasingly down in the polls here.   Why?

I think, quite honestly, because on a practical level many Virginians realize that our recent prosperity is entirely a function of the federal government.   Our state has two distinct economies.   There is the agricultural/industrial economy that dominates the southern part of the state.   It's stable, but not really growing.  Economically, it's basically East Kentucky.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  It's a more easy going life, or would be if you didn't have to work three jobs.

Then there's Northern Virginia.   NoVa has been the driving force behind the growth of the state economy.   In my own county, for instance, there are 500,000 more residents than there were when when my family moved here 35 years ago.  NoVa has grown as government has grown.   Government and military workers are part of that, but so are government and defense contractors and the service and retail industries that have thrived here.

The Federal Government is the main industry of Virginia.  It is an inescapable empirical reality, one so present that it inhibits our GOP governor from heralding Virginia as an example of the success of his economic policies.  McDonnell is no fool.  He knows where things stand.

So when I see the Romney/Ryan signs popping up around Virginia, I get it.  We're conservative.   But on another level, it's a bit fuddling.

Everyone is entitled to have a political perspective and vote accordingly.  And I do grasp the desire for sane, right-sized, non-intrusive government.

But if Romney and Ryan win, and they actually do the things they have committed to do, the net effect on the Virginia economy will be devastating.   A decimation of the federal workforce...which Ryan has promised...would have disproportionate impacts here, as would radical reductions in spending.  Beyond increased unemployment, there'd also be a massive reduction in housing demand and a crash of home values.  Those things combined would cascade, leaving state coffers as empty as the abandoned homes, offices, and storefronts that would become the norm in the state.

For many Americans, thems would be the breaks.   If you believe in reducing the size of government, then so be it.  Que sera sera.   But for Virginians, a vote for Romney and Ryan is a vote to collapse the economy of our state.   It's a fascinating abandonment of material self-interest in the interest of a broader ideology.

Heck, on some levels it might even be noble, were it being done intentionally.