DailyJim: Biden, Harris, and how monogamy may lead us to try to choose a perfect candidate

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gems episode for Monday, July 22nd, 2024.

Today I want to talk shortly about, what do I want to call it?

Oh, I had different ideas for this. Man, the day has gone.

Biden harris and how, monogamy may force may make us think this is a zero-sum game hey that title is gonna get you know changed the other title i wanted to do was biden drops out of the race, Harris to replace it sounded a lot more fun um but earlier today I was talking with people and or I was reading something on Facebook I think it was actually and a friend said.

That you know Biden Harris are very much the same because of what's going on in Gaza and how can you say that these people are and somebody said well you know is he better is Harris better than the alternative. And people started asking those questions. And I just started to wonder that, I wonder when we're thinking about choosing a president, do we try to find the perfect candidate?

Do we try to find one that has not caused any harm to people that we care about? Or do we try to find one that gives perfect speeches and also gives perfect policy, proposals and also gives perfect confidence and also gives perfect, etc., etc., etc.

And I started to think a lot about how I think in the romantic sphere, we tend to have this idea, well, if we have monogamy, then we are choosing one person. And we have to choose this one person.

And sometimes there are two people that we care about and we like, and we go, ah, but I got to choose one. So I'm only going to choose this one. But we can get stuck in, well, maybe this one's not the perfect one.

And i think we project a similar zero-sum mentality to choosing a political candidate at least in the u.s at least currently at least some of us and the way i've been looking at it more so is would i think that kamala harris is perfect and how she does it no but if i am electing only her and she has to do all the work, then maybe that matters more. But she doesn't have to do all the work. When the president comes in, they appoint something like 4,000 new people. And I imagine considering she was from the previous administration, if she gets elected.

She's probably not going to appoint 4,000 new people. She might. She might totally flip the script and bring all these different people in. But even if she did, she's still not doing all the work. Maybe she makes the final decision. Okay, I mean, technically, she's supposed to make the final decision on a lot of things, but she'll probably delegate a lot of things. And so then, does she need to be perfect?

Does the candidate need to be perfect if it's not just one person running the show? Now, I think sometimes when we think about monogamy, it's this idea, oh, this person needs to be my everything. I need to find my person. This idea of maybe even like a very strict monogamy.

And...

Yes, if that person is providing everything to you. But if that person is not providing everything to you, then maybe they don't need to be 100% perfect. Maybe it's like this person is good enough because I also have other people in my life. And that balance of relationship really helps me stay more stable and more balanced.

And allows me to be healthier in some ways. I don't know. And so really just kind of reflecting on this at a very late time tonight. But trying to understand why do we seem to be driving to choose almost like the perfect candidate instead of focusing on one that is good enough. And I think maybe expecting to only have one person or one thing, when we have to choose one specific thing and that's the only thing, then we can get a lot more picky on the thing that we're choosing. For example, I often have become more minimalist over the years and when I am choosing something, I am very specific on it because I only choose one. One like if i get a phone i have one phone or i have a laptop i have one laptop i'm not doing multiple laptops if i had multiple i'd be like yeah whatever i have multiple i don't care i can use this one and this one and this one but if it's just one then i think there's a lot of pressure to try to get it you know quote unquote perfect um so yeah just to reflect on that and wonder how it would be if we looked at our political candidates not as again not as an individual team sport or individual player, but as a team player, just one person representing the team may be playing a very important role, but not the only person on the team. Does that change the.

Perfection that we may crave from that person? I don't know. I don't know if this would answer my friend's questions about Gaza and these things, because maybe they'd say, yeah, but the whole team is doing it, so I don't really care.

But then if we compare it to the other team, would they do more? Probably, maybe not. It's really hard to know. But yeah, so just really reflecting on those things. And yeah, the U.S. is going through a lot.

Somebody, and I'll say this quote because I find it quite hilarious. On Twitter, I think somebody said, you know, the U.S. had a telenovela ass week. Week i said that's pretty spot on so all right y'all i'll talk to you tomorrow bye.