US Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) doesn’t like ranked choice voting. It’s “a scam to rig elections,” he tweeted on August 31, after Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican Sarah Palin in a special election for US House in Alaska.  “60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion — which disenfranchises voters — a Democrat ‘won.'”

What he leaves out of that claim is that 60% of Alaska voters didn’t vote for “a” Republican. They split their first-choice votes between TWO Republicans, with Peltola getting more votes than either Palin or Nick Begich. Peltola was the second choice of enough voters to give her a majority in the “instant runoff” with Palin.

If this had been a standard “first past the post” election in which a candidate could achieve victory with a mere plurality, Peltola would have won that way too: She received 39.57% of first-round votes to Palin’s 30.79% and Begich’s 28.09%. The ranked choice “instant runoff” merely confirmed that a majority of Alaska’s voters, rather than a mere plurality, preferred Peltola to Palin.

Cotton’s sour grapes tweeting reflects his sense of party entitlement, not any opposition to “rigging elections.”

In point of fact, Cotton’s campaign went to great lengths to “rig” the 2020 US Senate election in Arkansas, sitting on negative opposition research about sole Democratic candidate Josh Mahony until after the filing deadline so that he could hopefully coast to victory in a two-way race with Libertarian Ricky Dale Harrington.

As it turned out, Cotton wasn’t able to clear 2/3 of the vote, even in a deep red state with only one under-funded third-party opponent whom he dared not debate or even acknowledge.

That outcome may explain why Cotton fears and loathes the idea of voters ranking their candidate preferences and making those preferences count,  instead of just heaving a sigh and ticking the box next to whatever supposedly lesser evil one of two parties presents for coronation.

The “major” parties’ shared monopoly on ballot access, debate inclusion, gerrymandering, etc., combines with “first past the post” plurality elections to guarantee political careerists like Tom Cotton the paychecks and power to which they consider themselves as entitled as George III is to his newly acquired throne, crown, and scepter.

Changes that better reflect voters’ priorities and make it more difficult for swamp creatures like Tom Cotton to cling to undeserved power are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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As the world knows, the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8 at the age of 96, kicking off weeks of national mourning and ceremonies of transition.

Fewer noticed the passing, the day before, of American actress Marsha Hunt — whose film career began in 1935, and who starred opposite such names as John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, and Laurence Olivier before getting caught up in the McCarthy-era “blacklists” — at 104 years.

While these two women came from different countries and backgrounds, and took wildly different career paths, I’m struck by what they had in common with each other that few of the rest of us can even remember, let alone really understand.

They both lived through the Great Depression, World War Two, the Cold War, and the reorientation of global politics after the collapse of the Soviet Union (which was itself younger than Hunt!).

Most of us know those events only from literature and film (perhaps including Hunt’s None Shall Escape, the first movie about the Holocaust) or, if we’re lucky (and a little older than average ourselves), the oral recollections of our parents or grandparents.

The median global age is around 30. Half of humans now living can’t remember a world before the World Wide Web.

Marsha Hunt and Elizabeth II were adults before television became common and before most households even in “developed” countries had telephones, let alone telephones that could be carried around, take photos, and run sophisticated computer applications.

Between the two of them, they watched most of cultural, economic, political, and military water that ran under the bridge of the last century, a bridge we now find ourselves stranded on far side of without much living memory of where we came from.

Is “institutional memory” a substitute for the real thing? I don’t think so. While the Renaissance-era clothing and trumpet-blowing of Charles III’s ascent to the throne — or for that matter, a film retrospective of Hollywood’s “golden age” —  may be interesting and engaging, we remain trapped in the same tired old cycles of culture, politics, finance, and war that made the 20th century as horrific as it was innovative. We benefit from the advancements, but keep making the same mistakes.

Elizabeth II and Marsha Hunt may have been makers as well as observers of those mistakes, but we’re poorer for their passing: They’re no longer around to remember the mistakes for us, leaving us likely condemned to repeat them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“When police found a kindergarten boy who had walked off from school after attacking his teacher and classmates,” Elizabeth K. Anthony writes at The Conversation, “it didn’t take them long to start guessing about the cause of his behavior.”

Long story short: The cops concluded  the boy wasn’t getting enough of That Good Old Corporal Punishment at home, and told his mother exactly that.

“He’s bad because no one’s correcting it.”

“This is why people need to beat their kids.”

“As law enforcement officers  … we applaud the fact that you will please beat your kid.”

There are no happy endings to such incidents, but this case did result in a hefty settlement after a judge ruled that the police behavior involved was “assaultive in nature.”

For much of my own life, I assumed that “spare the rod, spoil the child” was not only how things were, but the only way they could be. My wife and I debated that belief in a  spirited manner and she largely prevailed in banning corporal punishment for our kids. I learned to keep my opinion (or at least my hands) to myself. But I never questioned it.

Then I inherited the razor strop.

It was my great-grandfather’s, then my grandfather’s, then my father’s, and when he passed away it — and memories of it that I’d tried to bury — came to me.

I assume my grandfather and his father used the strop for its intended purpose, sharpening the straight razor which I also inherited. And, yes, maybe for other things.

My dad didn’t need the razor or strop for shaving — disposable razors were fine with him.  But he used that strop liberally, on me, when my behavior didn’t measure up to his standards.

It’s just a strip of leather, backed by a strip of thick cloth, maybe two feet long and four inches wide. But in memory,  it’s a giant serpent of fire and pain that I lived in abject terror of throughout my childhood.

Was my father an evil man? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, 40 years or more after my final disciplinary encounter with the strop, I’m no longer convinced that his decision to inflict pain on me is the reason I’m not dead, in prison, or an alcoholic.

If the strop taught me anything, it was the false lesson that instant resort to violence “works.” I suspect I’m not dead, in prison, or an alcoholic in spite of, not because of, the strop.

I also suspect that violent punishment of children makes those children, and their parents, more inclined to non-defensive violence in general.

Corporal punishment becomes a shortcut that superficially “solves” problems without the time and effort required to understand and work through those problems for real. It’s the crack cocaine of dispute resolution — an instant high followed by the constant need for more.

If you’re a good person with good kids — and I bet you are — don’t make it harder on them, or on yourself. Parent peacefully.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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