Vote defiantly

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

OK, I'll admit it. I could not give less of a damn about this midterm election.

I shuddered as I typed those words. The vast, vast majority of decisions are a comparison of brown to tan.

The most exciting race we had this election was the mayor's primary, and it was just exciting because it was a kind of a freakshow. Pretty obvious even at the time that the “people's” candidates could never compete with the business candidates or professional politicians. And it wasn't just fundraising, it was ego. There can be no coalition or compromise when the ego is the fundamental engine driving a movement. “Oh, yeah, just back me, and we'll accomplish our goals” never works.

So watch. I'm going out on a limb here, doing something that journalists should never do. I'm making a prediction. In every decision that matters, the side that has the most money will win. For example, I've got very little hope for Question 3 because the money that benefits both from a less educated populace and from the marginal profit increase got behind its defeat. Corporations fought pro-education reform all across this country.

I just don't get it. Honestly, I've been thinking about the reasons for intransigence for 52 years now. Why do we let the nuts rule us? Why do we let the most close-minded, uneducated … nuts ruin our children's lives and futures? Ours? My kid went to a good school, but the majority of people's kids in Washoe County did not.

Elon Musk's five kids will get good educations, but it's unlikely they'll go to Nevada public schools. Likewise, when all those rich businesspeople were complaining about the Washoe School Board, I've really got to wonder how many of their children are in Nevada's public schools.

There's no individual finanicial profit in the greater good, and thinking consumes resources. There's a fundamental social law in those two facts, and if it weren't so depressingly banal, I'd figure out a way to say it succinctly.