There's a saying regarding debate, especially relevant to anonymous online forum or comment thread debates which we remind you goes: "Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

This wise and hilarious proverb is usually attributed to Robert A. Heinlein, and was also used by Robert Anton Wilson, although its true origin is somewhat debatable or uncertain. Its staying power comes from how elegantly it captures a fundamental truth about effort, receptivity, and discernment. On the surface, it means: "Don't try to educate, persuade, or transform someone who has neither the desire nor the capacity to receive what you're offering."

These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

There is a very old trick by which empires make themselves appear necessary: they persuade human beings that their value is measured by their usefulness to the machine.

The Pharaoh needs workers. The Roman Empire needs soldiers and taxpayers. The feudal lord needs peasants producing grain. The industrial capitalist needs labor. The modern corporation needs "human resources"— which is perhaps the most straight up Orwellian Skynet phrase ever invented, and if they cease to produce—through illness, age, disability, unemployment, or simply exhaustAion—they are subtly invited to regard themselves as having become less of a person. That is the great moral fraud of a production-obsessed society because a human being is not a commercial trader but also not even a unit of economic output.

These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

The mentally weak authoritarian hates (which is really fears) voting by mail because it's democratic - because that particular voting mechanism loosens the physical and psychological control surrounding the act of voting, opening it up to more citizens. The polling place is a bounded space. It has a time, a location, an atmosphere, officials, observers, procedures, and bad lighting - You arrive, perform the ritual, and leave, and we've talked about how claims of voter fraud are dog whistle for voter suppression, part of that suppression is making it harder to do even that basic process.

Voting by mail moves the political act out of that controlled theater and into a more open sphere. You can fill it out when you aren't exhausted from work in late stage de-regulated capital mixed with late stage empire, when you aren't worried about the time it's gonna take, transportation, or childcare. Mail voting actually gives democratic society something authoritarianism hates and thus fears: options via more time. It takes time to be part of the democratic process. It takes us at least a full day, if not a couple days to look into and research every candidate on a local or national ballot. And it should take you that much time as well. Then we need space to participate without having to rearrange our entire life that week or month around the machinery of one single Election Day. Which matters enormously.

These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos