20181106.0430

In the United States, today is Election Day, something about which I've written before (here, here, here, here, and likely elsewhere that I do not recall at the moment). For those who are eligible and able and have not done so yet: vote. (I took care of my voting early; an early voting site is near my workplace, and I don't usually take an hour to eat my food.)
Given where I am and what my predilections are, I typically vote with little hope, and more against people than for them. I acknowledge that they may not be healthy attitudes, being convinced that my vote will not much or at all matter and that nobody actually deserves my endorsement even if a fair number deserve my condemnation. But they are what I have to spur me on in such dismal matters, and they did, at least, serve to spur me this time, as has not always been the case. I am given to understand that I am not alone, either, and that is held by many to be a good thing.
Of course, such holding presupposes that the aggregate will make the right decision, and that is fallacious. Ad populum has long been recognized as an error of reasoning; that many people do a thing does not mean it is a thing that ought to be done. (And I know that "ought" is fraught.) I've heard it expressed by my parents no few times, as I am sure many others have: "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you, too?" (I don't remember if I made a smart-ass self-pitying reply like "It's a bad question; since when do I have friends?" But it seems the kind of thing I'd've said at many points in my youth.; I was a little shit, as I've often observed.) But elections work from the premise that the group will decide well.
I know, too, that "well" is a slippery term. Like most, I count as good that which conduces to my benefit and the benefit of those about whom I care. My background and experience circumscribe the latter substantially, I admit, although I do not think I am even close to alone in that. Ultimately, I know that I am compromised and biased--I have made no secret of it, nor do I do as others do and try to claim I am not when it is clearly untrue--but that does not mean I am not correct. Nor does it mean that I am not immensely frustrated by things going as they too often seem to go--or that I do not look forward to and strive to create a time in which they go otherwise, and better.