{"id":10923,"date":"2008-02-01T10:23:12","date_gmt":"2008-02-01T15:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/02\/01\/10923.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:48:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:48:09","slug":"another-short-quiz-this-time-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/02\/01\/another-short-quiz-this-time-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Another short quiz, this time about democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Your Humble Blogger happened to hear a brief interview with Ralph Nader this morning on the radio. I'll get over it, like I'll get over the rest of my illness, but while it lasts, it sure is painful. It's not just that he seems to have never quite figured out that falsely telling people that there was no real difference between the ways Al Gore and George W. Bush would act as president might have some sort of detrimental effect on the country. It's not even the obnoxious way he complains (falsely) every four years about how state laws make it difficult for independent candidates for President to appear on the ballot in all the states, without putting any of his considerable muscle behind, oh, actually changing those laws through a democratic representative system. It's the way he seems, even now, to take the electoral rejection of candidates he supports as a sign that the system is broken rather than an actual lack of support for those candidates and their policies. Or at least those policies as they were represented by those candidates.<br \/>\n<p>So, once again, here's a little quiz for Mr. Nader, and for everyone else who is or would like to be a citizen of these United States:<br \/>\n<p><strong>If you could appoint one person, living or dead, to be the President of the United States, would you:<\/strong><br \/>\n<ul><li>immediately take office yourself, claiming a mandate to reform a degraded system<\/li><br \/>\n<li>enthrone the Messiah, to carry out the work of the Lord<\/li><br \/>\n<li>decline, with thanks, explaining that it is preferable to hold free and fair elections, and to abide by their outcomes<\/li><\/ul><br \/>\n<p>Once again, give yourself ten points for every <I>aleph<\/I>, five for every <I>beta<\/I>, and twenty points for just showing up. Don't show your work, and keep your ballots secret. You do need to do the damn work though, and for extra credit, create a democratic society, capable of self-governing in all its many senses.<br \/>\n<p><I>Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,<br>-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Which Your Humble Blogger complains, because it still hurts to swallow, although the fever is gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hatchet-job","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18246,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923\/revisions\/18246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}