Source: Astral Codex Ten
“A red sun dawns over San Francisco. Juxtaposed against clouds and sea, it forms a patriotic tableau: blood red, deathly white, and the blue of the void. As its first rays touch the city, the frantic traffic slows to a crawl; even the birds cease to sing. It is Election Day in the United States. Future generations will number American elections among history’s greatest and most terrible spectacles. As we remember the Games in the Colosseum, or the bloody knives of Tenochtitlan, so they will remember us. That which other ages would relegate to a tasteful coronation or mercifully quick coup, we extend into an eighteen-month festival of madness. The mathematicians say there are simple voting systems that could practically ensure the selection of a universally-popular moderate. We reject these, and — in a country with a hundred living Nobel laureates — near-invariably pick a pair of mediocrities, extremists, or lunatics.” (11/05/24)