14 May – Beauty Spot Gap to Little Rock Knob (15.6 miles)

Don’t know where this day went…  got going early in a spooky cold fog (sorry I didn’t think to take pictures!) and just plugged along all day, thinking all my crazy thoughts and marveling at some really nice mossy old-growth-looking coniferous forests at elevation.  (again no pictures!)  

“What crazy thoughts?” you say;  here’s one:
Isn’t the idea of having a President embarrassingly antiquated already?  [No specific reference to our current President who happens to make my case in Spades:  I’ve been thinking this for several Presidencies now]. 

Here’s the argument:  why should we let one person make huge decisions that affect everyone which could be driven by whim, caprice or worse:  stupidity or political vengefulness?  How can we be in a position to entrust earth-influencing decisions to a single human with, in most cases, frailties of reason and emotional soundness?  We call this ‘representation’ of the people?  No, it’s a largely false and half-hearted representation of the voters, based on cotton-candy campaign promises during the election carnival, which survive the general election by about 5 seconds.  Then the flip-flops happen and we all make little concerned faces and go on about our business of watching Wheel Of Fortune while parked behind a good meatloaf.  Meanwhile, our ‘President’ wakes up on any given day and simply decides climate change is a hoax, or that we ought to invade Iraq or elsewhere, or that horrible despots are cool people after all.  Or that cute young interns are fair game for romance, or that the biggest financial criminals in the world won’t be prosecuted though they caused world economic collapse, or that maybe we should, or shouldn’t, have a space program, or be drilling for oil in the Arctic.  And enormous resources and prioritization of effort are allocated to these things voters never specifically agreed to.  But again, we have Wheel Of Fortune and meatloaf to console ourselves with.  

We can’t depend on Congress to check our Presidents, (ok-I’ll give you the Nixon thing but it took journalists to force that outcome).  I’ve encountered more spine in a banana than in Congress and no wonder:  their first priority is to remain in office and the rest of their priorities don’t deviate from the first—that’s what I’ve seen. (Don’t get me started on fundraising, voting strict party alignment and making it ok to not answer questions—though even trace elements of integrity would demand public servants not obfuscate.) 
Back to the original point:  how soon before we look back and laugh in amazement that we hung with the President thing so long?  I wish I was already from another planet so I could laugh now.  Let’s get over the Founding Fathers thing…they were smart and brave for their time but they shit in buckets and owned slaves.  In other words, times have changed, and government should change with it.  Right now our concept of President is not materially different from having a King and his advisors (party loyalists).  And you know how we think the King thing was so Medieval….

What’s the solution?

Anything is worth a try… how about leveraging technology to give every voter a chance to really represent their positions when someone upstream is doing something capricious? Or, do away with the Executive having more than administrative power, or elevate Congress to new and more representative powers, subject to term limits and subject to rapid voter override? Or, let the Judiciary have some kind of oversight on the Executive—oversight with teeth. And spine. I don’t know.

But global government is inevitable, and when it comes, I hope there isn’t one person at the top who can act like a ‘President’. (You asked!) 

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