Preview of 2012? Voter landslide in Colorado against new school taxes

By David McElroy · November 2, 2011

When politicians want more money, their favorite words are, “It’s for the children.” Even those magic words didn’t work in Colorado Tuesday, as voters rejected a $3 billion “temporary” tax hike for government-run schools. Penn Pfiffner, chairman of the underfunded group opposing the tax, showed his joy last night at a celebration in the Denver suburb of Littleton.

Is this a preview of the 2012 election? Republicans hope so. Democrats hope not. I don’t think you can draw a conclusion other than saying that many voters are angry and don’t intend to vote for anything they see as a sacrifice for them. Conservative voters are going to reject even the most well-intentioned tax hike. (Check out this story if you want to know what the Colorado tax would have done.) Liberal voters are going to reject anything they see as being favorable to people who they believe already have money or privilege.

In other words, it’s going to be an especially polarizing election in 2012 in many places. In their anger, people aren’t going to be voting for someone as much as they’re going to voting against someone who represents something they hate.

Republicans will end up nominating one of the usual suspects (such as Mitt Romney), and Democrats will presumably stick with Barack Obama. Republican voters won’t love their nominee, but they will hate Obama and work passionately to defeat him. Democrats won’t love Obama, for the most part, but they will hate the Republican nominee, who they will see as a representative for “the rich.”

If the economy stays the way it is now, I suspect the Republican will win, simply because Obama has been the president while the downturn has gotten worse. But if McCain had been elected three years ago, Democrats would be licking their chops about their chances — because McCain and his people would have taken pretty much the same statist economic actions that Obama’s people have taken, with the same (predictable) results.

People are mostly too ignorant to realize that the problem isn’t Democrat vs. Republican. News outlets mostly assume that’s the only story, so that’s they way they frame it. The truth is that the real issue is the coercive state vs. the free market. Democrats and Republicans are pretty much united in standing with the coercive state, despite their differences in rhetoric. They’re Tweedledum and Tweedledee. As long as either side of the red vs. blue battle is in charge, the coercive state still wins — and we still lose.

The 2012 election is a year from this Sunday. As Republicans go into the year, they honestly believe they’re going to elect someone to bring about change. Democrats who were supporting Obama or Hillary Clinton at this time four years ago believed the same thing. Democrats were wrong in their naive beliefs then. Republicans are wrong in their naive beliefs now.

You’re not going to get positive change from majoritarian politics. You’re only going to get it by returning power to individuals. Opt out of the system. The only way to win is not to play the game.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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