David McElroy

Dear Donald Trump:

I was really interested Wednesday afternoon when you made your business proposal to Barack Obama — the one in which you offered to buy copies of his college transcripts and passport application for $5 million. I had heard you had a big announcement coming, but I didn’t know it was going to be this big. Or this exciting. Honestly, the possibilities astound me.

Since I know you’re such a great and successful businessman — we won’t even mention those unfortunate bankruptcies — I know you always have your eye out for a better deal. And, boy, do I have a deal for you. Since you’re in the market for college transcripts, I just happen to have a very nice set of lightly used transcripts from the University of Alabama that I’d be willing to let you have for less than the $5 million you’re offering to Mr. Obama.

I know you drive a hard bargain, so I’m going to cut right to the chase. I know that owning a set of my transcripts wouldn’t be quite as prestigious as having a set from a sitting U.S. president, so I’m willing to cut quite a deal. What are you thinking? $4 million? Maybe $3 million? Good gracious, no, sir. I’m willing to take a measly $2 million for my transcripts.

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When an earthquake hit the Italian city of L’Aquila in 2009, it wasn’t much different from any other natural disaster. Earthquakes are impossible to predict with any degree of certainty, so nobody knew it was coming. Unfortunately, 309 people lost their lives.

The odd thing about this case, though, is that that local government is sending six scientists and a government official to prison for manslaughter — because their scientific opinion that a major quake was improbable is now considered “too reassuring.” Somehow, an accurate reading of the science at the time is getting these folks sent to jail.

When there were some tremors ahead of time three years ago, the local government set up a risk assessment committee to look at the scientific information and provide an opinion. There were six seismologists and one government official on the committee. After looking at the data, they concluded that a major quake was possible but improbable.

Other scientists now mostly look at the data and say they agree with the conclusions the committee reached. Still, the fact that more than 300 people died meant that government had to blame someone. There had to be scapegoats.

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I’m just going to say one thing about the third party presidential debate that’s being held Tuesday night. I won’t be watching the debate and I don’t much care about it. I’m sure my rhetorical sympathies would be with the things said by Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, but I can’t say that I want anyone to vote for him. I don’t want anyone to vote for anyone, because I don’t want a ruler.

I don’t want a conservative ruler or a progressive ruler or a Green ruler or even a libertarian ruler. The problem is the fact that someone — anyone — is given power over you, not the identity or party label of the person given that power. Even if a third party had a chance to win, it wouldn’t change the root cause of our political situation. It would just hand power to someone slightly different — until the Establishment took back over. So the problem is the system itself, not who gets elected, which is why the third party debate is irrelevant to me, at best.

If you’d like to argue that the two mainstream parties unfairly keep out the other parties, I’ll agree with you. If you want to argue that the “winner take all” system here makes it impossible for smaller minority opinions to have much of a seat at the table of democracy, I’ll agree with you there, too. But arguing about those flaws overlooks the basic issue.

I don’t want any ruler, no matter what party he comes from.