Rank and File for Bankruptcy

That title makes no sense. That’s exactly why I like it. Which is yet another of the many reasons that I’m rarely invited to parties. I don’t make casual conversation well.

I had that title phrase in my head for a couple of days and then tried to figure out something to write that would work under that heading. No, not really. Actually, the concept of this post involves rankings and then I was typing it I thought of “rank and file”. Then my next immediate thought was the phrase “rank and file for bankruptcy”. Which I found amusing. But for the purposes of this post let’s pretend that it just says “Rank”.

For as long as it’s taking me to get to the point you would think that I’m being paid by the word. For as long as it’s taking me to get to the point you would think I’m being paid by the word. I’m not. But by now you’ve probably realized that duplicating the sentence was in itself a horribly clunky attempt at what some humans call “humor”. Though clearly this was not an example of it.

Ok, now to the point. Which is rank. But not military or royal rank. For the moment I’m interested in the rankings of humans based on qualifications for a certain task. As opposed to something like Chief Mouser, Fool, and Royal Diaper Changer. All of which are or were genuine royal ranks.

Here, finally is the point. Are we even pretending anymore that the people we hire to represent us in government are in any way qualified or suitable for such a position? Before I start beating up on my fellow citizens in the American public for voting for stupid people, let’s make clear that we really don’t get much of a say anyhow. So many other factors conspire to bring about the Republican self-fulfilling prophesy of a hostile and inept government run by pitiful buffoons.

The most glaring of these factors is that billionaires and corporations more or less decide who’s going to hold office. And to be fair, their selection process isn’t exactly embracing the best and the brightest. I would expect that they prioritize a certain “moral pliability” in those that they choose for the thrones. Let’s tangent* for a moment and remind each other about the 86 members of the United States House of Representatives that signed a letter to the Chairman of the FTC in support of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger. Written in crayon, it argued that reducing competition in the wireless industry would benefit consumers with increased innovation and competition. I’m going to take a brief timeout from sarcasm for a moment and say that this is completely moronic to the point where calling it moronic is an insult to morons. By the way, the term “moron” used to have a very specific technical meaning. It was the exact term for an individual with an I.Q. of between 50 and 69. Nowadays its considered an insult. Good. Because that’s exactly my intention.

After the merger, wireless prices, that had been dropping for more than a decade, began a steady rise. This was a surprise to exactly no one. Not even the 86 corrupt imbeciles that signed on to that letter. I switched to imbecile because while researching the technical meaning of “moron”, I discovered that “imbecile” was also a precise technical term at one time. “Imbecile” referred to a corrupt Congressman (or human) with an I.Q. of between 26 and 50. This is clearly more accurate and once again proves that my devotion to intellectual integrity is legendary. If only among “idiots”, who were anything below a 25 I.Q.

We don’t really get to pick who represents us so for the purposes of this story we can hold ourselves blameless. Well, for the most part anyway. Because we do have a tendency to vote for people whose name we have heard. There was a study done where based on the results, Jeffrey Dahmer would have won a governorship over the actual candidates had he been on the actual ballot. People remember names much better than they remember events. So they will vote for George W. Bush and Jeffrey Dahmer rather than a traitorous dullard or some no-name cannibal.

I was surprised to learn that dullard had no similar prior technical association with I.Q. After a great deal of research I discovered that it developed around the same time as the effects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome were first categorized. The word Dullard came into use specifically for George w. Bush. It is important for legal reasons to note that this entire paragraph is what was known during the Spanish Civil War as satire. No actual Bushes or other Saudi whores were harmed in the making of this paragraph.

So, it took a while, but I think we’ve established that we suck at choosing leaders which works out ok because we don’t get to pick them anyway. But imagine if we could pick them and some smart people worked out a way for us to pick the right ones. Stay with me here for a second, there might be something worthwhile on the other end of this.

Algorithms!

If you read the papers algorithms can do everything. Actually there really aren’t any “papers” as in newspapers, to read very much anymore. And the few left are owned by Jeff Bezos, hedge funds and those numnicks that “blew in” on the submersible. Damn! I get sidetracked so easily. The true thing is that algorithms are all over the place and doing everything except handing out fentanyl laced candy on Halloween. I’m not going to insult your intelligence with a definition of algorithms. I’ll just go right along with you and pretend I understand what they are and how they do things.

But they really do useful and amazing things. For instance, let’s say you are walking down the street minding your own, or someone else’s, business. Suddenly and for no reason at all you think of the word “Honda”. It just lasted a moment and you never thought of it again. Until you open your Facebook page and see just under 300 ads for Honda. Your phone rings from a number you don’t recognize. You usually don’t answer those kinds of calls. The last 19 times that you did answer the call was from someone trying to sell you an extended warranty for a car you sold in 2013.

Nevertheless you do answer. It is your local Honda dealer offering special incentives for those who have thought of Honda. You rudely press “end call” in a haze of fear and rage. The phone screen is replaced with, you guessed it, a Honda ad. You realize that these harassing ads, much like this story, could go on forever. So you do the smart thing and buy a Honda. Yet the ads and phone calls continue for several months anyway.

So the technology isn’t perfect. But in all seriousness the technology exists to find for us the most qualified among us. I would be willing to bet that it would relatively easy to create a program that would produce a list of the top 100 people who had the best combination of talent, knowledge, and temperament to be President. Or any other job you can think of. Political or otherwise. In other words, we have the ability to RANK everyone in order of their qualifications.

In all seriousness this would be an incredibly useful thing and would probably help quite a bit. Voters would have no obligation to vote for those recommendations but we could certainly consider them. Again without sarcasm, the reason we won’t get anybody to do this is that the billionaires that control technology already control politicians. They have no incentive to create a system that gives us better choices.

It would also solve another problem that we used to have back when our vote mattered. The skill set it takes to run a good campaign and win are very different than the skill set it takes to actually govern. You might say that the person needs to campaign like someone who can sell a Honda. But probably the person who would be best for the job would be the person who could build a Honda.

Ok, now the fun part. Let’s make fun of politicians. I would like to bash Mitch McConnell because he is particularly harmful and shitty. But I’m going to go with presidents because everybody has heard of them in between Honda ads.

If we always had a computer program that could rank the entire pool of qualified candidates, where would the actual presidents come in? Let’s say there are about 200 million people that technically qualify. That’s a guess, but a decent one. The only rules in the constitution are that you have to be a natural born citizen, over 35 and that you’ve actually lived here for 14 years. So that’s most adults over 35.

So we “train” the algorithm (that’s the in word now, “train”) to find the behaviors, education, credit score and bowling averages that might get us the person best suited to be President. Imagine we were really good and fair at it so it was a real, if not perfect, means of finding the needle in a haystack. But it does even more. It gives you a statistical score and ranking of every qualified adult living at the time. Where do you suppose our actual presidents would have ranked?

I haven’t talked about Trump much except to engage in the horrid practice of fat shaming. Though, in Why The Fuck Not? (coming soon) I do refer to him as Cunto Trump. Whether or not you are a delusional Magat or not, I still think that you might agree that he would not have finished at or near the top of the rankings. No matter what algorithms we put in place (unless pussy grabbing were a highly weighted criteria) he probably would not have ranked in the top half. Meaning there would have been at least 100 million people more suited for the presidency.

As I non-Magat, I believe that there is at least a chance that his combination of narcissism, racism, dishonesty*, misogyny, added to his demonstrable status as a sexual predator, might indeed put him closer to 200 million. He may, and this is debatable, be more qualified than the idiots, morons, and imbeciles in the ranking. I doubt that even the most ardent, reality-starved of his supporters could find much to disagree with, if you were able to make them understand the concept and criteria of the rankings. Which alone would be an arduous and unworthy task. I doubt that they themselves would rank Trump much higher than those living in reality. I have even more doubt that it would matter to them even one iota*.

I would be remiss if I failed to apply these rankings to the dullard and fetal alcohol syndrome baby George W. Bush. By all accounts a “nice” man. I might have a beer with the man, if given the opportunity. But unless the desirability of drinking with someone becomes a heavily weighted criteria of the rankings, I fear dear George would fare quite poorly. I can’t imagine any reasonable set of criteria that could place him in the top half. If that baby had found a way to pass those ears through anything other than one of the world’s richest and most prominent vaginas, he is not likely to have risen beyond the status of a UPS driver*. A status he would most likely have lost in a haze of substance abuse.

Bottom line, we easily have the technology to create something like this. And it wouldn’t be too hard for some well-meaning techies to put their heads together and make it happen as a way to ease their conscience and enhance the public good. In other words, it can and should happen.

But even I don’t believe that the rankings, even if created with the most meaningful and honest criteria, would be all that meaningful. For the time being, all data sets come with caveats that still can’t quite account for the human equation. I would see it as a useful tool. It’s creation and use might even be more beneficial as a mirror for us to reflect on who was chosen and why. And it also may help to make many of the people who need it the most to be able to understand how little difference our votes make. That alone would make it worth it.

You might have noticed four of these “*” along the way. Here’s what they mean:

1. I used tangent as a verb. And brilliantly so. I await a call from the NOBEL committee.

2. dishonesty was used with regard to the repulsive obese fuck-tard who was, to our shame, the 45th president of these United States. But dishonesty is not quite the right word for him. Because his relationship with truth and reality is one of complete and utter indifference. That’s worse. True or not is irrelevant to him. Fuck him.

3. One Iota. Its worth noting that one iota is the only amount of iotas that are ever referred to. Ever, as far as I can tell. You’ve never heard anyone say, “I don’t give 37 iotas about vicious owl attacks” though I hear they can be a quite a problem.

4. UPS Drivers: A noble and honorable pursuit. Please forgive my associating you folks with a person who is neither noble nor honorable. I am sincere in my desire to not be sued.

KEEP YOUR NEEDS SIMPLE AND YOUR MASTERS FEW