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Monday Miscellany, 7/8/24

Monday Miscellany, 7/8/24

Last updated on: July 8, 2024 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 7/8/24 2024-07-05T12:33:07-04:00 Gene Veith

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The Democrats’ conundrum–and a way out. The future of marriage: different spouses for sex, companionship, money, and parenting. And the total of all countries’ national debts.

The Democrats’ Conundrum–and a Way Out

So who will be the Democrats’ presidential nominee? Though President Biden has won all of his primaries, all of a sudden, thanks to his embarrassing debate performance, lots of Democrats want to replace him. But how? And with whom?

After years of denial that anything was wrong with him, now that his advanced age and mental slipping was obvious for all to see, that strategy no longer works, though some Biden loyalists are still persisting in this denial despite all evidence. In fact, as so often happens, the cover-up of a scandal becomes its own scandal: As in the White House staff trying to keep the public from knowing the president’s condition and to some degree running the country for him. And as in the media covering the president, who now admit that they had been refusing to report what they had seen because they didn’t want to give facts that would support the “right wing media.” Now, though, at least some mainline reporters are working against the grain of their bias by admitting the president’s difficulties.

So despite many Democratic leaders and donors calling for him to step down, Biden remains defiant, insisting that he will stay in the race, though some reports are saying he might change his mind. The nomination is his if he wants it, since the convention delegates are pledged to him, so Democrats can’t get rid of him against his will.

Besides, if he does step down, who do they have to replace him? Vice President Kamala Harris has been as unpopular as he is, but Democrats seeking an option are rallying around her. The option of an open convention, in which the delegates vote for nominees and keep voting until one of them gets a majority, is being portrayed as “divisive” and “chaotic,” but this is the way political parties used to pick their nominees in the era before primary elections and it would make the otherwise boring conventions must see TV.

There is, however an easy process for the Democrats to replace Biden. As NBC News has pointed out, if Biden decides to step down after he is nominated, the party’s rules are straightforward:

Under the existing rule, Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison would name a new nominee, in consultation with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Democratic Governors Association Chair Tim Walz of Minnesota. Their choice would be presented to DNC members — a group of party leaders much smaller and more elite than the delegates to the convention — for ratification or rejection.

There is a lot to be said for the old smoke filled rooms.

The Future of Marriage: Different Spouses for Sex, Companionship, Money, & Parenting

We now have same-sex marriage. What next for the institution?

Polyamory–having multiple romantic parties with all of them consenting–has been getting good press. This amounts to a group marriage. Whereas polygamy is usually one husband with multiple wives (though a very few cultures have one wife with multiple husbands), polyamory typically involves a group consisting of both genders, with multiple “husbands” and multiple “wives.”

Right now, the polyamorous are mostly content to form their groups apart from the legalities of marriage, but a Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition has been formed to work for “the legal recognition of diverse relationship structures, such as multi-partner/multi-parent families, diverse family structures, and relationships involving consensual non-monogamy.” That is to say, a new version of marriage.

But that is just the beginning. In a feature entitled What will marriage look like in the future?, National Public Radio interviewed Jake Dunagan, a “futurist” expert on the topic. He envisioned “unbundling” the different functions of marriage, so that we could have different spouses for different purposes. Let’s make up a word for this and call it specialized marriage:

Marriage] has been a norm in human society in a diverse way. We’ve invented and reinvented marriage. We ask marriage to do a lot in our society, from sexual reproduction to romantic love to personal fulfillment, political alliances. Do we want to keep those bundled in marriage or do we want to split those up? You know, do we want a function for socially sanctioned romantic love? Do we want something about economic mobility and robustness? Do we want something about parenting and bringing up children together? So if you think about the futures of marriage, you know, do we have those official formal sanctions and ceremonies for each one of those? Maybe or maybe not. But we have things that might stretch the meaning of what marriage is.

To be sure, Dunagan is just raising questions at this point. Do we want to unbundle marriage like we do TV subscriptions? “Maybe or maybe not.” But at a time when more and more people are willing to do without marriage all together even when it comes to parenting, we may be moving to de facto polyamory and specialized spouses.

The Total of All Countries’ National Debts

Some of us worry about the national debt. If it makes us feel any better, the rest of the world is also drowning in red ink.

The total amount of governmental debt is now $91 trillion. That is close to the size of the world’s economy, whose gross domestic product is $105 trillion.

But don’t feel too good about that. The U.S.A. owes nearly a third of that at $30 trillion, which is already more than our gross domestic product of $29 trillion.

For what all of this means and why it’s bad, see this article by CNN’s Hanna Ziady entitled The world is sitting on a $91 trillion problem. ‘Hard choices’ are coming.

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