The Erosion of Traditional {X}

 The Post magazine has an article: "How Religion Can Help Put Our Democracy Back Together".

It includes this sentence: "Meanwhile, another parallel collapse is unfolding: the erosion of the traditional norms that have sustained our democracy. "

It's the sort of statement which I see relatively often: modern trends are undermining/eroding something from the past.

It's true enough, but what's usually ignored is the building of the new.  For example, one thing going on now, about which I know nothing except it's gathering momentum and creating professionals, is the development of online games. What sort of norms are the participants in such games learning?  What's the culture which has developed?  How might those things carry over to public life.

Congratulations to the Bidens, Harris, and Emhoff

 And most of all to the United States of America. 

The Democratic Debates Start

Reps. Spanberger and AOC seem engaged in an early debate over the course of Democratic politics.  Spanberger said Dems should deep-six talk of "socialism" and "defund police", blaming that for the defeats of some Democratic representatives who gained office in 2018, and the failure to take new seats.

AOC has a twitter thread countering that position, arguing that some new progressives won (my comment--I think they won safe seats by winning the Democratic primaries) and that many candidates were lousy in their digital campaigns.

I suspect both are right.  It's a big country, but politics is often local.  So positions which are popular in one place, like NYC and its suburbs, and not in another area, like southern Virginia, or southern Florida. Appeals which work with one voting bloc may well turn off another bloc. [Updated: and people are complicated and react differently to different stimuli.]

Hopefully the different parts of the party can mostly reconcile under (probable) President Biden's leadership.  His task will be quite difficult: he's likely to be considered a one-termer, and therefore have less clout than otherwise.  I'm reminded of 1976 and President Carter's job--he too had liberals on his left, still smarting over the failure of their dreams in 1972,  and led by a Kennedy.  That didn't work out well for him. 

Congratulations to Republicans

 Republicans made significant gains in House races, mostly it seems because they nominated and supported women candidates. For that they deserve congratulations, even though one of the successful candidates is an OAnon supporter.

This is one of the ways our politics works in the long run: one party comes up with an advance, like nominating women candidates or a fund-raising mechanism like ActBlue; the party gains an advantage; the other party then tries to catch up.

My Predictions: 0 for 2

 Once again the elections defied my predictions.  I'm assuming Joe Biden will be inaugurated on Jan 20, but that's about the only thing I got right this year (won't talk about 2016).

Time enough for analysis when all the votes are in, but it seems the national polls once again were reasonably close, the state ones had their problems.

But the lesson for me, once again, is to warn that my picture of reality is warped by my desires for what reality should be. You'd think after almost 80 years I'd learn. 

What Dems Will Owe to Stacy Abrams and Beto O'Rourke

 As in my previous post, I'm confident of the election outcome.  Georgia and Texas might or might not vote for Biden/Harris, but it's clear that Democrats owe a lot to the efforts of Stacy Abrams in Georgia and Beto O'Rourke in Texas.

What We Will Owe to Arnon Mishkin

I'm confident that the Biden/Harris ticket will win, likely tonight.  In that confidence I want to link to this NYTimes article on perhaps the most important bureaucrat/nerd involved in the election: the man running the Fox decision desk.  

He's important because the media decision desks provide the data for analysts to call a state as having firm results. He's doubly important in my scenario because the Fox news people are the ones who have the credibility to persuade Trump supporters that their man has lost.  And he's triply important because of the big unknowns of this election: the impact of early voting, of the massive turnout, and of the pandemic. And he's quadruply important because of the uncertainty of Trump's reaction to a defeat.

Women Advance? Some Evidence

It's interesting to follow the posts on the FSA Facebook Group for a number of reasons.

Sometimes posters in the group ask for help on various issues, questions of policy, software, approaches to handling service during the pandemic. Sometimes it's just sharing news, funny stories, etc.

In the last week there was a work issue which seems to have been solved by some software developed by a county employee, which a number of people asked for.  Back in the day that sort of thing happened as well.  A couple difference from 30-40 years ago:

•  the existence of the Facebook group.  I don't think we had a formal sharing site before the SCOAP QandA's in the late 80's and Jeff Kerby's BBS around 1990 or so. There's more lateral communication these days as opposed to running things up and down the ladder of the hierarchy.
• the gender of the person creating the solution. In the old days the creators tended to be males (I'm thinking of doing programs for programmable calculators around 1980 and queries for the System/36.  I might be wrong on this--it might be I just noticed or remember the men more and/or the female creators were operating in a more informal environment.

I think both differences are good. 

A Bad Tuesday Evening- Unexpected Violence?

Some are worried by the possibility of  violence resulting from the 2020 election.  Their fears seem mostly to be that Trump supporters will be upset by a Biden victory and commit some violence.  The fear is of "sore losers" I suppose it's possible that some on the right have a similar "sore loser" fear of violence coming from Biden supporters if Trump pulls off another upset. 

As a general proposition I'm not that afraid of the scenario. But there is one which I just thought of which scares me.

I remember occasions, I think mostly when a college wins either the NCAA football or basketball championship where the students take to the streets and riot, destroying property, etc.  We normally dismiss such episodes, at least I dismiss them, as "boys will be boys".

But, there's a lot of emotion invested in the outcome of this election. Isn't it more likely that election violence will come from "exultant winners"?  I remember the election of 2008, when the winners exulted.  That was a victory of love, of belief in Obama, of the redemption of America, and I don't remember any particular violence, or animosity directed towards McCain supporters.

But a Biden victory on Tuesday would be a victory based on a lot of animosity towards Trump, and some of his supporters. 

I always like a metaphor, so think of the exultant winners and despondent losers as two masses of plutonium, back in the days of the Manhatten Project.  Keep them separate and everything is copasetic.  Bring them together and you get a nuclear explosion.

The Future of Vertical Farming

 This asks the question: Can Vertical Farming Grow Beyond Herbs and Leaves?

I'm dubious, if we're talking generally.  I can see vertical farming might work in niche areas: on the moon and Mars or in permanently inhabited space stations, where it's the only economical alternative.  Or in areas such as Iceland, where geothermal power means cheap cheap electricity, which current powers aluminum smelters and datacenters for block-chain systems. Or in the grand future when we have practical fusion.  

Or there may be a technological breakthrough which drastically changes the economics.  But bottom line, I don't see its broad comparative advantage, particularly as long as we use fossil fuel to generate electricity and, if as I assume, it's a net contributor to carbon dioxide emissions.