I still get discouraged and depressed a few times a day.  Sadly things like the election and seeing how angry and divided my friends are over it is probably the main contributor.  I imagine there are parents explaining to their kids that elections didn’t used to be this nasty or divisive.  But it is discouraging seeing my friends fight each other and fight me.  I mean, come on already.  Listening to my friends argue and fight over the election is really discouraging and stressful.  I think many of my ‘normal’ friends are more insane than I am, especially when it comes to voting.  I have a hard time believing that these are the same people who were saying “United We Stand” in the months after 9/11.  It’s been mind numbing and soul killing watching this election unfold over the last year and a half.  A politician spends many millions of dollars and a year and a half campaigning for a $400,000 a year job to set priorities, budgets, and agendas for the country, and the job lasts for only four years, eight tops.  And you normals think this is sane?

Regardless of who is elected, I don’t foresee the march of science and technology advancement slowing one bit.  Some people in my country were concerned when NASA ended the space shuttle program several years ago.  But private companies like SpaceX have proven more than able to pick up the slack.  When I was a teenager I was unhappy that my government cut funding for a particle collider that would have been larger than the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.  But CERN has picked up the slack that was left when my leaders chose to be short sighted and not care about pure science.  In the early 200os, my country banned most stem cell research only to see countries like South Korea and China increase their research in this field.  And Japan has always been a leader in robotics research.  Germany has good robotics research too.  As was pointed out in one of the links of my last blog, even developing nations are building up their renewable energy infrastructures.  People in my country would be wise to pay more attention to the world outside of the U.S.  We are not the only country in the world with free markets or advanced science or manufacturing.  This isn’t the 1950s no matter how bad you want them to be.

Speaking of America not being the only ones with advanced tech,  Foxconn, one of the largest manufacturing corporations in China, has just  put in 40,000 robots in their Chinese factories.  Even Chinese labor is losing out to robots. And our candidates prattle on about how they are going to bring manufacturing jobs back to America?  Maybe for the engineers and programmers servicing the robots but not for the guy or gal who never went to college or trade school.  I would not want to be working in manufacturing, clerical, call center, or truck driving work within the next several years.  If any of my readers are in such work, you may want to have a back up plan in case your job gets automated.

Another thing that kind of irritates me about this election is the myopic hatred of immigrants.  As far as I’m concerned, we’re all immigrants if what the anthropologists and biologists say is accurate.  The ideas that we’re going to force out millions of undocumented immigrants, ban all Muslims, and cut ourselves off from the outside world are insane.  If it wasn’t for the H-1B visa allowing foreign scientists to work in America, my country would not be very competitive in science research.  And it is science research that creates new industries and technologies that make entrepreneurism possible.  Henry Ford did not invent the automobile but he did make it available to the masses.  And if it wasn’t for scientists and engineers researching the internal combustion engine, the automobile wouldn’t have been possible.  My countrymen should not be outraged by immigrants and we should not isolate ourselves from the rest of the world.  We definitely should stop making war on peoples and nations that don’t agree with us or have resources that we want.  We’re going to have to cut our losses eventually and admit that all these prolonged wars were mistakes and didn’t solve much.  And I don’t see any candidate saying they want to end the wars.  That’s another thing that irritates me about my politicians and my countrymen: they seem to think that violence will solve everything.  No it won’t.  As someone who spent much of his childhood being bullied by schoolmates, I can tell you that you don’t forget or easily forgive people that mess with you over and over again.  I was bullied and I still remember the people that did it even 20 to 30 years later.  There are always unforeseen consequences.  Killing people won’t make them like you.  It will make the survivors hate you.

I’ve probably said too much already and opened myself up to a great deal of harsh criticism.  But if I do get harsh criticism from people for this post it only proves my point that you normals are acting insane about your politics.  And it is irritating and nauseating. Knock it off.