The Voting Machines Story

My one time inside The Old Weird Harold, on a tour with my eldest son Scott, we were ushered into a room and spoken at by "a real reporter" and, at the end, asked if we had any questions "about current news items or topics".

At the time, replacing paper ballots with electronic voting machines was a big topic of discussion, and I raised my hand and asked, "What do you think about replacing paper ballots with voting machines?"

You would have thought I had accused him of sucking the Pope's cock during high mass. It was incredible. The guy became livid instantly, and called me a crackpot and a conspiracy theorist and so on. He raved, literally. And during the rant he let slip the fact that he KNEW FOR SURE the machines were ABSOLUTELY TRUSTWORTHY because he'd reported on them extensively AND, it just so happened, his brother-in-law and others in his family owned a company that MADE them...

Well, I stood then and calmly said, "You said you reported extensively on the machines, but just said you were related to someone who makes them; isn't that a conflict of interest?"

He glared at me, opened his mouth, shut it, then strode out of the room, leaving everyone in the group floored.

And of course they all then shot ME dirty looks for "ruining" their tour and for being such a crazy liberal trouble-maker... As they stood and wandered from the room, some muttered what a jackass I was, and yet, all I'd done is ask a question and a sensible follow up question.

I was astounded, still am. I'm also now more cynical about how people prefer conformity and orthodoxy to facts, truth, or even to probing for such things. Better not to make waves, better not to rock the boat, than to find out useful, important, and interesting facts, is how they live. They being society, the collective group. The hive mind, the herd, call it what you are taught to call it, what's familiar to you. Better that way. Won't upset you if you reduce it to cliché.

They want answers, regardless if they're lies, and detest questions, regardless if they're revealing, insightful, or trenchant.

Later, I laughed about it, and said, "You know, it fucking figures. I can't even ask ONE innocent question without being buzz-sawed by the right."

The right, meaning the approved, the sanctioned, and the allowed.

///

Writing Late At Night, Questions Arise

Is writing communication,
the marking of territory,
or merely jabber to stave off loneliness
in this closed cranial cavern?

When words leap the gap we call time,
voices of people long dead speak again.
Is what they say more than
a waving hello between islands,
so we know we are sharing
experiences common to us all?

When we read, do other members
of our lonely species link through us
to each other, across a spectrum of
writers, writing, words, and voices?

Does writing bind the literate
into a greater experience of an
unknowable, isolated, yet somehow
elevated status of being?

Are each of us, those who
call themselves writers
because we write words
into sentences, stories, and songs,
seeking communion with
others like us from all times,
past, present, and future?

Write it once and it is always.
Read it once and it is yours.