Regarding Choices

If you come to a fork in the road, take it. -- Yogi Berra


Selwyn Duke wrote an article that stopped me in my tracks this week.

As many of you know, I have advocated the investigation of third party candidates as the eminently rational choice for your vote in November. After all, neither the republicans nor the democrats have much of a platform to offer, and there are dozens of people you or I would rather have as president than either of these choices. In fact, I can think of three that are actually running for president that are better qualified and preferable as choices, so why not pick one of those instead?

I have rejected many arguments against third party voting before now. I could hold each of them up to the light and see that they reflect only the self interests of the parties themselves. Then, Mr. Duke put an analogy in play that shows a few more facets.

Picture a bus traveling down the highway. At each exit ramp, you have exactly two choices. You can move right, or stay left. The third party candidates reside in an alternate place somewhere else that is not immediately accessible. To get to one of these better places, Duke advises that you would need Captain Kirk's help. So, as a practical matter, it is always about two choices.

His argument is that every choice presented in the past leads to the sequence of choices in the future. As much as we'd like to visualize the right guy in office, the best we can hope for is to take an exit that doesn't take us very far away from our desired destination.

In many ways, choices have been made all along, and the real leaders are either not involved in the race, or have already been eliminated. To belabor the analogy once, it's like we missed the best three exits, and now have a choice between one exit and another.

Perhaps choosing between them is a more rational choice to make than one of wishing for a warp in the space-time continuum precisely on November 4th. I recommend reading the article.