Tristan Hoare

What happened in 2013?

How's this for irony: Dropped my son off for his first day at high school, and the first song that plays when we get in the car is "High School Never Ends".

🤣🤣🤣

Politics is an exercise in forced equilibrium though. Especially that last hypothetical. I almost find it more likely that the new party won't make it even as far as the '26 elections, let alone '28. Maybe the split on the center will just be party migration and dilution of the GOP with former Dems.

If that happens, they could easily destroy the conservative end of the spectrum at the ballot box in '26. And, if that happens, and Musk's money somehow lasts him until '28 (personally, I doubt this is likely), that might make enough room for the Democratic party to split, causing a repeat of 1860.

Sum that all up with his notorious "talent" for over-promising and under-delivering, and it becomes easy to predict that this "America Party" will go nowhere.

Not that it won't accomplish anything. There's enough dissatisfaction within the GOP that the two ego-singularities could split the vote.

Keep in mind: Participating in a Twitter poll these days requires a subscription to the service. So, that's 2/3 of people who have actively chosen to pay Musk for the pleasure of... something? I never figured out what.

That result, despite the selection bias and Musk pushing the idea, is abysmal.

3) Get Elon Musk out of politics

While I'm sure Musk, himself, could get behind the first two, that third one is a doozy.

It really says something when he polled Twitter about creating a new political party and he got somewhere north of 66% saying "Yes".

Pollsters do try to find such agreement points, and there indeed are a small handful of views out there today that are polling with around 80% agreement. But they're not enough to make a political party around. Namely:

1) Release the Epstein list
2) Immigration is good for the country

And, well...

Back to my thesis though: Musk also claims to want a party for the "80% in the middle" of the U.S. political spectrum.

I shouldn't need to say this, but, getting 8 out of 10 completely random people to agree on ANYTHING is nearly impossible. Let alone 80% of U.S.'s 330 million.

(Can't fully blame them though. After all the negotiations back and forth, the Senate, the House, and the 3/5 debacle and the fact that they didn't have a working example in front of them to learn from, mistakes were naturally bound to happen)

And, of course, you don't need the history lesson (which Musk, understandably, never got in apartheid South Africa) to see that. All you need is the math. The entire thing seems to have been accidentally rigged up to force a two-party system by our founders who wanted NO parties.

(On a side note here, it always strikes me as odd that the Republican party calls itself the GOP (Grand Old Party) when, as you can see here, they are actually YOUNGER than the Democratic party)

The last time a 3rd party rose above all of that and actually managed to break, and subsequently replace, an existing major party in the U.S. was in 1860. 165 years ago, when the Republican party replaced the Whig party. (Also helped along by the fact that there where 4 parties that cycle)

It is an incredibly rare for anything to even MAYBE change as in 2000 when the Nader drained a small amount of support away from Gore. That election was close enough that it may have changed the outcome. Effectively causing the OPPOSITE of the 3rd party's desired outcome.

The rare case where 3rd parties rise above that, they usually only manage to draw votes away from a major party, but not enough to change anything, as in 1992 when Perot put just enough drag on Bush to flip a few Electors to Clinton, but Clinton would have won without them anyway.

Obviously, the first point here is the absolutely stupid first-among-losers approach to most elections in the U.S., including ALL elections at the national level. The simple fact that this, and the Electoral College are baked in to the Constitution basically curses any 3rd-party to obscurity.

I know I should have posted this one earlier, but Elon Musk's "third" U.S. political party only demonstrates how little intelligence and understanding he actually possesses.

That's not to say it won't have an effect, of course, but it most certainly won't be the effect he wants.

Ambassador Londo Mollari - Babylon 5

My family and I have been watching through Babylon 5 together and it's rather striking just how many of the problems faced are all caused by a thrice-married, twice-divorced, tired, old man, who wants to make his nation great again.

Not to draw comparisons, of course. This guy regretted it.

If I were to set this up in a blog (not on a social media site) who would be interested in following along?

I promise no regularity on posting, nor any kind of consistent narrative. Honestly, I don't even promise that I'll DO it. But, I'll try.

React, or comment if you are interested.

Right now I am finding myself thinking a great deal about thinking. That is to say, WHAT I think, and perhaps more importantly, WHY I think it. I also feel the need to share in this philosophizing with a friendly, but also critical, audience.

Every one of them will do that recipe in their own way. All of them come from their own trials, errors, and tastes. They all get adapted differently to match the local palettes. And each chef wants to do their own thing.

And right there. That's where you'll find the local character.

How many unique (non-chain, or local-chain) restaurants can you see from that spot? How many are run by immigrants, or first-generation natives? How much to they outnumber the coffee houses by?

Go order their most recognizable dish and realize something: You will never get that same dish elsewhere.

A valid criticism of globalization is that every location loses its character. You can find the same coffee shop on every corner (you know the one) diluting the differences everywhere.

BUT, I challenge you to go to each of those coffee shops, stand at the entrance, and look the OTHER way.

None of his CURRENT aides have questioned his competency PUBLICLY. Most FORMER aides seem very willing to.

Remoras generally don't want their shark to die.

Since when is the Onion putting up actual news instead of satire?

#TACO

Sums it all up rather nicely.

Anyone else think that maybe it's time to repeal the Alien Enemies Act of 1798? Has its invocation ever NOT been an atrocity or an affront to the idea of Liberty?

Reading Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents while listening to music on Pandora when I read the following:

"Of course there weren't just rat plagues - " (Weird Al - My Balogna starts playing) " - sometimes there were plagues of accordion players..."