What is the invisible hand of the market?  Proponents make it sound like it will save us all.  All you have to do is believe.  Have faith.  Deregulate.  It’ll take care of things.  Just you see.  “Trust me.”

Let’s break this down.

Imagine.

What?

I don’t know.  You choose.

Okay.  I imagine…a loose tooth.

(I was originally going to write this in one post, but then I realized it was going to get way too long.  There’s a lot of ground that needs to be covered, so I’m splitting it up into a few essays.  This part introduces you to the point of view from which I’ll be writing throughout the series, and then focuses on the historical reasons behind our current election and voting systems and why I view them as separate and dependent systems.)

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I am a gamer.  I enjoy playing games and have done so nearly my entire life.  Of course, I don’t like all games.  Who does?  In my case, games of chance are not my cup of tea, since there’s little, if any, skill involved.  And I’m not much into sports.  (I must be un-American!)  That doesn’t mean I’m unfamiliar with those games or that I don’t appreciate them, but being that I’m uninterested in them, I haven’t taken the time to really learn their rules.  Primarily, I’m a role player, but I also enjoy board games, card games, silly games, serious games, and many other types.  I’ve been playing games since I can remember, but I wasn’t a student of games (so to speak) until after I left high school.  I want to briefly (I hope) explain why this has any bearing on elections and voting.