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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #185 (Votes)

Published 12 days ago • 5 min read

Family Photo:
Votes

I asked Lawrence if he wanted to come with me to vote:
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​Lawrence: What's vote?
Me: It's when we tell the government what we want.
Lawrence: hmm...can I bring my Christmas list?

We settled for bringing a toy car and headed off to the polling place.

Perhaps an indicator of San Luis Obispo's high cost of living, our polling place is a private airplane terminal. Everyone is amazingly friendly though, and after I voted the ACI Jet people let Lawrence visit the hangar and walk around and see the private planes.

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There was one issue on the ballot this year: whether to redraw the California districts.

Redistricting for me, but not for thee. Everyone wants "fair maps" and everyone is very happy to draw their own maps and explain why those are the fair ones.

California wants their maps to be extra-fair this year because Texas made their maps extra-fair, and if something like that goes unchecked states across the country might start popping off and making their maps extra-fair...especially if the Supreme Court rules to allow super-extra-fair maps.

Gerrymandering gets a bad rap—though it does make for a good civics lesson and a reasonably challenging puzzle video game.

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I'm working through Robert Caro's The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (as well as 99% Invisible's chapter recaps). One of the book's themes is how even in democratic systems power accumulates in non-democratic ways. Power resides with who draws the maps. Power resides with who interprets the laws. Power resides with who writes the laws more than who votes for them.

Robert Moses never held elective office, but used state and federal funds to build more roads, bridges, parks, and housing projects than any politician could have dreamed. Caro reports that the governor Al Smith referred to Moses as "the best bill drafter in Albany".

​Landscape by Moses: ​
A map of the roads, bridges, housing projects parks, and other physical projects in the New York area where Robert Moses played a dominant role.
​
During his almost half-century in power, Moses constructed 658 playgrounds in NYC alone, 2,600,000 acres of parkland, plus 416 miles of parkways and 13 bridges, and dozens of housing developments. Other projects include the United Nations, Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, the 1939 and '64 World's Fairs, the New York Coliseum, Jones Beach, NY Aquarium, Central and Prospect Park zoos, and Stuyvesant Town.

Dad Jokes:
Voter Issues

Source: derek guy​

Highlights:
Giving and Getting Votes

​Coolest Things I Learned in 2020 by David Perell​

In Praise of Tradition
​
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” — G.K. Chesterton
​
“The dead outnumber the living 14-to-1, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.” — Niall Ferguson
​
“The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to [a fence] and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” — G.K. Chesterton, The Thing (1929).

​Lessons I Learned From Thomas Sowell’s Memoir by Rob Henderson​

Sowell gave [entering politics] some serious thought, even speaking to a political insider, a “political pro” about it:
​
“Who’s going to be taking care of my son while I am running around every day trying to get votes?” I asked.
​
“Look,” the political pro said, “to a real politician, his family exists to help him get elected. If you see it differently, then you don’t belong in this business.”
​
Sowell then writes:
​
It took these pros very little time to decide that I was not the stuff of which successful politicians are made.

​The Accidental Speaker by Elaina Plott Calabro​

He “held back,” he told me, largely out of deference to Scalise (“who’s like my brother”) and then Jordan (“who’s like my other brother, my mentor”), both of whose bids would fail. And also, Johnson went on, “because a mentor told me when I was in eighth grade, ‘Always remember that real leadership is recognized, not imposed.’”
...
​
Johnson told me he “knew,” even then, “that I could get all the votes in the room.” But he didn’t want to campaign openly at first, he said, “because I wanted them to come to me and say, ‘You should be the leader.’ And ultimately that’s what happened.”
...
​
Privately, Johnson has used humor to signal an awareness of the gulfs that separate him from Trump—that he is not blind to the patent absurdity of the man. Over the years, he has honed his impression of Trump, and frequently deploys it when recounting their latest exchange. Friends still get a kick out of a story about how Johnson once told Trump that he was praying for him, to which the then-president responded: “Thank you, Mike. Tell God I said hi.”
...
​
“Well,” he said, “we had an experience …” He looked over at his communications director, a wordless request for permission.
​
It was last fall, the week of Thanksgiving. Johnson had gone down to Palm Beach for a fundraiser; his sons, on break from school, had gone with him. Trump, upon learning he was in town, called and invited the new speaker to Mar-a-Lago for dinner. Could the boys come? Johnson asked. No problem, Trump said. So they headed over, and what was supposed to be a 45-minute get-together stretched on for two and a half hours. A great start to the trip, Johnson recalled.
​
The next day, Johnson was meeting with donors at a beachside hotel, not far from Mar-a-Lago, when his security detail burst into the conference room. “Mr. Speaker, we need you right now,” they said. His sons had been swept out by a rip current.
​
In Johnson’s telling, Will, who was 13, was drowning; 18-year-old Jack, prepared to give up his own life, tried to push his brother back to the surface. A parasailer happened to spot Will’s head from above. He hurried back to shore and alerted the lifeguards, who went out on jet skis to bring the boys in. Johnson arrived at the beach to find medical personnel hovering over his sons, pumping their chests. They would spend four hours in the emergency room before being cleared to go home.
​
“President Trump heard about it somehow—miraculously, this never made the news,” Johnson recalled. The two got on the phone. “He was just so moved by the idea that we almost lost them, and we talked about it at great length. And we talked about the faith aspect of that, because he knows that I believe that, you know—that God spared the lives of my sons. That’s how I understand those events, and we talked about that.” Johnson continued: “And he said, he repeated back to me and said, ‘God—God saved your sons’ lives.’”
​
For Johnson, repetition was window enough. Much like a parasailer glancing down at just the right moment, a Trump victory in November would not be accidental, Johnson told him, but “providential.” A gift to be embraced soberly, for a purpose larger than oneself. “And we talked about that, and I think he has a real appreciation for that, and that’s been, you know—it’s been encouraging to me.
​
“So we’ll see, we’ll see,” he said, his voice a touch quieter. “We’ll see where all that goes.”

iamJoshKnox Highlights:

London | William Blake

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London | William Blake
Dead Artist Collective
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