Elections...

Ahhh…  soon, soon it will be all over.  Well, all over apart from the lawsuits.  What will be over?  The USA elections.  Forget about the candidates.  Forget about the fact that right now Americans have a choice between what the Economist magazine calls the incompetent and the incomprehensible.  Forget whether or not Bush lied, or whether Kerry has ever meant something he said without putting a disclaimer in there somewhere, perhaps.  The election system of the world’s richest democracy is a farce.   If what is happening here happened in another country at which American observers were present, those observers would be the first to sound the alarm about “vote rigging in a banana republic” and other similar derogatory terms.

Let us start with the fact that elections are not in the charge of an independent electoral commission, as in some countries.   Here, elections are state affairs and are in the hands of the Secretary of State for the state.  Who is an elected official, belonging to one of the two parties.   Very independent.  Remember 2000, and Florida?  The Secretary of State who declared for Bush, was also, I believe,  Bush’s campaign manager for the State. 

Guess what, Florida is also in the news again.  For instance, 58,000 absentee ballots one county in Florida went “missing”.   Correct – went missing.   I laughed in the office when I joked with my colleagues that those ballots probably went to the 50,000 “extra” registered voters which Ohio has – “extra” as in more than the number of eligible voters…

Hanging chads were a problem in the last election – they will be again this year.  But at least people have been educated about the dangers of these chads.   Many voters will be using new, touchscreen voting systems.  Many of which have no paper audit trail to prove that your vote for say, the Republican candidate, did not get “lost”  or directed to the Democratic candidate.  Worryingly, some Secretaries of States have appeared on television saying that when the older recounts gave a result different from the first count, pudits jumped on them.  Now, with this new system, the “recount” always gave the same result – so why are the pundits jumping on them?  

That’s just the Presidential race.   The race in the House of Representatives?  Foregone conclusion.  This last session, most states have been so busy blatantly gerrymandering: redrawing the constituency borders in their states so that the incumbent party will always have the majority of the votes.   In fact, the Democrats have no hope of capturing the House.  They would do well with all their gerrymandering to retain the seats they have…

One good thing though, my right-wing dyed-in-the-wool wrapped-in-the-flag Republican colleague, agrees with me:  in any other country, all this shennanigans would have been decried.  But hey...Once again….only in America…

Of course, the worst possible nightmare is an election that is very close, in which case:  let the lawsuits begin!

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Aside from the elections, life has been the usual hectic rush.   Last week, I went to Houston, Texan to attend the Bar Mitzvah of Daniel, Trang’s son.  The Bar Mitzvah is the ceremony marking the coming of age of a boy, and his entry into the synagogue as a full member.   It is a religious ceremony, where the candidate leads the prayers and actually preaches a sermon.

I first met Daniel 7 or 8 years ago when I worked for Trang in Japan.  Since then it’s been off and on, including a trip in Paris, when I had Daniel on my back while we walked the streets of Paris.   Now, he’s a 13 year old young man, standing at 5 ft 7 in.   Nope – I’m not going to try to carry him on my back! 

It was very interesting, attending a Jewish service.  I looked at it detached with interest.  I know the history of the Jewish faith from my theological studies.  However, what I knew was necessarily coloured by my faith.  Having said that, one of my colleagues at the UN, David – a Jew, was always amazed at my knowledge of the Jewish faith.  He was amazed that I knew its history, including important features such as the theological differences of two early schools of Judaism – Beth Shamai, and Beth Hillel.   I could hold a discourse with him about the two schools of thought.  In his words, I sounded more Jewish than many Jews!  Anyway.  It was therefore interesting to attend a service.  I found their prayer-book fascinating.   I think if I were back into a leadership position in a church again, and were planning a service, I might look to the Jewish prayer-books for inspiration, instead of confining myself to those of the Anglican Communion.

One of the duties I ended up undertaking on this trip (isn’t this a recurrent theme – go for some celebration, end up undertaking duties…) was to help Daniel prepare for his role.  Not his Hebrew – he had 6 months of instruction there, but simple things like, tie his tie for him.  Do up his cuffs etc.   Make sure he looked okay.  And also coach him on how to deliver his sermon:  how to slow down, breathe, where to slow down to emphasise a point, what to just gloss over, and where to make that dramatic pause.    

The boy did good.  For a first timer, he did good.

Oh – at the age of 13, he is already a babe magnet.  Asian mother, Caucasian father, with a touch of that intangible but oh so important “bad-boy attitude”, he had girls lining up just to talk to him.  I looked at his father Larry, and said, “You’re son is a menace to womankind.”   I think his response was more in the lines of worrying about Texan fathers and shotguns…  J

And it got me thinking – he’s 13.  At my age, I could have had a son of that age, and could have been doing the coaching, fixing the buttons etc for a child of mine.   Eeek!  Time has flown!   A high-school classmate of mine (yes, I do keep in touch with some of them!) said, “Relax, you’re just getting broody.  Happens to most of us some time.”   This from a guy who has been with his wife 11 years, but still holding out from having children.  His excuse?  “I’m selfish – I want to be the only centre of her attention!”   Hah!  Wait till his wife’s biological alarm clock rings! 

Still – all of these family/society events point to the continuity of the family, or the people.  It definitely has more meaning in the Jewish context because of their history, but even in our own families, there is always the coming together of the family in the celebration of hatchings and matchings.  And I suppose the drawing to a close of life at the dispatchings.  Ahh… and so life goes on…

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Talking about past reaching to the present, I received an e-mail from someone who claimed to be an teacher of mine from secondary (high) school days.   You’re talking 17 years ago now.   I asked a question to confirm the news, but when she confirmed who she was, I reported to our class Yahoo!  Group.   The news that Ms Jackie Toh had been contacted started a frenzy of reminiscing that had the board buzzing like it has never done in a long while.   Everyone was coming up with memories of her.  So I passed a few back to her… and she remarked she never thought she would be remembered so. 

But truly the mark of one’s achievement is not the amount of money, but how many will stop to remember you.  It means I’ve touched their lives…somehow.  Something that was rammed home to me by one of my ex-staff one evening many years ago in Hong Kong.   I think she also told me that by that measure, I did well there.

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Sometimes it pays to read what one writes…   my Ethics course is coming to its conclusion.  The final unit is about Euthanasia.  Before getting to that was the penultimate assignment.  I signed off my e-mail submitting the assignment to my tutor “And now on to euthanasia.”   I hadn’t realised how that read till I was running the spell-check, and quicklu added a post-script saying that really, the course wasn’t THAT bad…   My tutor got into the swing of things and added that he was perturbed by my comment and felt it would have been sad reflection on his tutoring if a student felt that the only way out was euthanasia…

Anyway.  Time to get back to clearing up things on my To-Do list… far too long.  And also to get ready for my next German trip.  Starting Monday evening…  Until the next time..

Warm regards