A President You Can Believe In
and a better way to pick legislators
Before we get started today, let me just say that this was a really good little movie, better than the average in the last two people at the end of the world genre.
One of my previous favorites being this one.
I’ve written a few times over the past couple of years about my membership in Crescent Rotary, one of nine (?) chapters of Rotary International here in Greensboro / Guilford County.
We meet on Mondays at noon-thirty out at the Coliseum, in the Terrace room.
Rotary International is a huge group, with over a million members spread out over 46,000 clubs in most of the countries on Earth. They spend millions of dollars per year (billions over the century of its existence) on humanitarian projects in seven causes:
promoting peace
fighting disease
clean water, sanitation, and hygiene
saving mothers and children
promoting education
growing local economies
protecting the environment
Such a sprawling organization raises questions of efficiency and waste, but RI has a good record on that front, with a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator.
Still, size inevitably leads to some level of problems in communication and coordination. I’ve been a member for several years now, and I had never even heard of the interest-based Fellowship sub-groups until a few months ago. One of the nice things about the Fellowships is that you don’t have to be a Rotarian to join. They’re meant as outreach tools, and ways for members to leverage Rotary’s resources and network outside the core causes. On the initial list I saw at least half a dozen that I plan to follow up on. However, I also noticed that there were no official groups for tabletop games, video games, comics (arts in general seemed pretty thin), or speculative fiction. This must be remedied.
Back in the summer I started a Facebook group for recruitment purposes, and I’ve been running board game nights at Gate City Growlers the first Monday night of every month. We have about twenty people in that online group, most of them local or old friends of mine. Rotary’s rule is that you have to have at least 25 members, from 5 different countries, and at least 3 officers from 2 different countries before applying for recognition. So now I’m putting it out here.
So far I’ve found only a few Rotary newsletters on Substack.
Rotary in Cardigan Bay (last updated in September)
Rotary Club of Sonde (last updated in March)
Rotary Club of Bahrain (last updated 2022)
Rotary Club of Hollywood (which hasn’t been updated since December of 2021)
Rotary Club of Midtown Tarlac (which has yet to publish anything)
Rotary Vimmerby (same)
Rotary e-Connect (same)
The active ones are basically lists of ongoing projects and announcements.
You know, classic newsletters.
In that spirit, Pigstock has rolled around again. I mentioned it last year, in one of the most popular posts I’ve done on this blog (I mean, newsletter).
I hope to go again, this weekend.
As an experiment, I’m giving free subscriptions to anyone from my own club, Crescent, who wants one. I hope they’ll advertise for me to nerds in their own networks. I’m also contemplating a discount for any Rotarian, worldwide, and wondering how to make that work.
Our other upcoming event is a banquet where the current President of Rotary International Stephanie Urchick is due to appear. Presumably she will say the state of Rotary is strong, or some such thing.
One of the good things about Rotary is how they handle succession. As I understand it, there’s a three-year commitment of president-to-be, president, and past president, the same way it works at the individual club level and the district level. Peak commitment comes during the presidential year, but there’s much to learn the year before and much experience to share the year after.
I read a short book a few years ago that applied that model to Congress, with one important addition: that the members were chosen not by popular election but by random lottery, like jurors.
My favorite section from the FAQ on Democracy Without Elections:
Aren't normal people too stupid to be trusted?
Democratic Lotteries fortunately construct deliberative bodies that are competent. According to top academic journal Science Magazine (2019) [5],
“Deliberative experimentation has generated empirical research that refutes many of the more pessimistic claims about the citizenry’s ability to make sound judgments…. Ordinary people are capable of high-quality deliberation, especially when deliberative processes are well-arranged: when they include the provision of balanced information, expert testimony, and oversight by a facilitator."
Deliberation can overcome polarization, echo chambers, and extremism. Democratic deliberation promotes “considered judgment” and “counteracts populism”:
The communicative echo chambers that intensify cultural cognition, identity reaffirmation, and polarization do not operate in deliberative conditions, even in groups of like-minded partisans. In deliberative conditions, the group becomes less extreme; absent deliberative conditions, the members become more extreme.
Something to think about, this week, as the ads multiply. I had 190 e-mails in my spam folder last week, and I counted ten that were not from a political campaign or a scammer pretending to be a political campaign.
I don’t know about you, but I have better things to spend my money on. Like candy, and barbecue, and liquor, and education for Vietnamese children. Also solar panels and Substacks.
Next week, we return to Chimeria for another installment of “The Lizard Thing.”
Until then, Happy Halloween and remember to tip your servals.
From Blackadder III, ep 1, "Dish & Dishonesty"
Of course it's not fair -- and a damn good thing too. Give the like of
Baldrick the vote and we'll be back to cavorting druids, death by
stoning, and dung for dinner.
http://allblackadderscripts.blogspot.com/2012/12/blackadder-iii-episode-1-dish-and.html