Quantum Politics…Or Something…

I was trying to think of a cutesy title for this piece when it occurred to me that the word “Quantum” had a nice ring to it… so I thought “how ’bout Quantum Politics for this one?”.

Alas…I thought I had just made up this new phrase “Quantum Politics” until I Googled it and found out I was way behind the curve (like I was when I invented the pet rock 20 years after it had already made jillions).

In my Google travels I came up against a great Op-Ed from last August out of Australia. It is a fun and playful little ditty that does far better than I ever could in explaining just what pieces of [redacted] politicians really are…and just how stupid we’ve generally become:

Politicians can be as hard to pin down as photons as they practise their own peculiar forms of science.

“It’s not difficult to understand, really,” said Leon. “Just think of modern Australian politics in terms of quantum physics.” He smiled quietly to himself, before settling back comfortably in his chair. I nodded quickly, but it must have been only too obvious that I had no idea what he was talking about. He began to explain.

“Imagine an electron bumping into a photon,” he began, before stopping abruptly. He must have seen the blank look creeping over my face. “Look. A photon is like a tiny part light of a beam of light. In some ways it behaves like energy; in other respects its like a particle. This means its location is impossible to measure precisely.” Another nod seemed the only possible response. Then came illumination. “In essence, the particle appears to exist in two places at the one time.”

The light bulb suddenly switched on. Exactly!

What’s my point? Well…consider the GOP/RNC machine and how it has handled us (yet once again as it did in ’08) by making sure we get a nominee we don’t like, don’t trust, and don’t want. They are sure Romney’s turn has come up, sure that he can win, and sure that he can get the most dollars to PAY for the run against Obama. Do they care that Romney isn’t really all that ideologically different from Obama…fundamentally…on the issues that matter most to Conservatives?

Of course they don’t; the Republican Party isn’t really all that different anymore than the Democrat Party after all, so what’s the big deal?

There are better candidates in this race, on paper, but none has the implicit endorsement of the GOP establishment. There are more qualified candidates in this race, but none has the ability to end-around the GOP and “go rogue” on their sorry asses…nope-this is a done deal folks, and all the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the world will not undo where the GOP intends to take us in 2012: political obscurity.

I had assembled about 20 headlines that I intended to lay out in a cutely worded paragraph to indicate just how it is that Romney’s back is firmly covered by the party establishment. I opted out of actually posting them because my time is too valuable to invest any more of it than necessary wrt the Republican party:

Newt & Perry slam Romney, Rudy gets pissed, Perry supporter wants the Romney attacks to stop…Brokaw calls the South Carolina leg of the primaries a GOP “jihad”… Gingrich attacks are backfiring, the stars are aligned for a Romney win, and Conservatives rally to Romney’s defense.

It’s all pretty clear to me; the GOP elite want Romney, the Tea Party has failed miserably to prop up an alternative (some elements even caving, choosing to back him) and even the Democrats are salivating over the prospect of a Romney v. Obama matchup.

I have a few dear friends who share my belief that the GOP dies with a Romney nomination. I don’t mean it goes away…I mean it finally, officially, becomes Dem lite… and their foolishness since ’08 (’06 really) will give indys out there like me no reason to bother with them anymore:

If the Executive and the Legislative are Democrats (by large enough majorities) at least we’ll get past the gridlock and get some [redacted] done.

My only real satisfaction will be seeing the morons that have led the GOP in the House and Senate FINALLY go away and get the hell off my tv screen…there’s that at least.

I leave the last word to Chad Orzel… he speaks volumes here:

[Q]uantum politics tells us that prior to a vote, every politician exists in a superposition of both “yes” and “no” votes, until the instant of voting, at which point they will take one of the two positions, with some probability for each. Even after voting, however, the exact position of the politician will remain indeterminate, depending on the exact audience he’s addressing.

Some quantum political scientists favor an interpretation in which the universe splits at the instant of voting, creating two separate universes, one in which the politician voted “yes,” the other in which he voted “no.” Others feel, based on listening to political speeches, that this is far too limiting, and the actual number of universes created is much greater, possibly infinite.

Non-locality: Some quantum systems exist in entangled states, where measuring the state of one particle instantaneously and absolutely determines the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are. Similarly, quantum politicians can exist in entangled states, where knowing the state of one politician instantly and absolutely determines the state of another with absolute certainty. For example, if you measure the state of Barack Obama on any issue, you know with certainty that John Boehner’s state is instantaneously projected into the opposite position.

[featured image via Quantum Lounge, in-line image via KLSouth]