The title of this article is a point I am going to drive home later though want to introduce early on. The phrase for it is misdirection, diversion, sleight-of-hand or more contemporarily click-bait. Sorry, if you’re disappointed or possibly too easily relieved, but I’m going to make a point here.

1. Setting up the Rules

The bunny-from-a-black-hat is a classic and most basic trick necessary in the charismatic magician’s repertoire. The idea is that from the audience’s perspective a bunny is conjured from the shallow recess of a black top hat on stage. Wow, I know.

It goes like this:

1. A priori, a small bunny is placed into a securable black handkerchief which is hung against the table on a hook

2. The hat is tossed in the air (to prove nothing is in it).

3. A red (any color is fine though red’s vibration jolts the eye more) scarf is suspended and waved before it (the hat, now resting opening-up on the table). This is where the magic really happens.

4. While the magician shows their hands and sleeves the bunny-bearing-handkerchief has already been slipped into the hat so that when the magic-imbued hands reach in, voila, a bunny is pulled out from it.¹

Remember that the black suit and handkerchief create a sort of blind spot, the red scarf is a diversion, and the bunny is chosen because it has a tendency to stay still.

Between May 25 and September 17, 1787² some fellows got to together to write a document that explained the new national government’s laws which is known as the Constitution. At the time there were around 3.5 million people³ in the United States which was comprised of merely 13 (states). It explained many such things, one of such things explained was how it was going to run and how, when, and where to choose who would run it.

2. Gaining Confidence

Registered voters are allowed to participate in a near entirely symbolic electoral process on Election Day. It’s a serious and drawn out process to explain. Essentially the first section of the second article of the Constitution states how elections for the president are to be held:

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors…

Basically, it’s why we have electoral colleges. Electoral Colleges are made up Electors! Electors are a group of 538⁴ individuals that head on over to vote for a president in December, a month after being voted by voters in November.

3. Sleight of Hand

In other words, registered voters don’t vote for presidents directly in November but actually vote for the Electors who will vote for presidents in December. It works like this: registered voters decide who, as a populous in their respective states they want to vote for and electors who’ve previously stated who they would vote for cast ballots on their behalf later.

What’s interesting is that Electors are not obligated to fulfill or carry out the vote of the population they represent. This is generally known as a faithless elector, though it is rare.

It’s worth noting that 700 propositions have been made to “reform or eliminate the Electoral College” in the last 200 years due to it being “ambiguous and archaic” according to the American Bar Association.⁵

4. The Crowd Goes Wild

Why all of this is important, to mention one reason, is because as long as we maintain the belief that somehow either Clinton or Trump, or any future candidates for that matter, are the only two people to guide 324 million people⁶ into the “most important decisions” that will affect them for the next four years is tantamount to the folly and self-nullifying conviction wherein one waits for “one single person or unique moment” to change the entire course of their lives. The reason it’s folly is because, save perhaps the death or birth of relevant people to us, the totum our lives is a conglomerate of myriad instances and decisions that we have a chance to make in every conscious, and unfortunately not limited to, unconscious moment occurring all the time. The reason it’s self-nullifying is because in a way, we are absolving ourselves of the responsibility to make impactful daily conscious decisions that influence that world around us and are effectively relegating that power to someone else.

Another reason is that when we ascribe to the aforementioned paradigms we’re reinforcing this false dichotomy spoon-fed by the advertising or media machine that pits a “side” against another i.e. black vs. white, gay vs. straight, left vs. right, citizen vs. alien, scientist vs. theologian, conformist vs. rebel, etc. etc. that is likely (I say likely because on a global scale humanity hasn’t been without it for some time) not the actual conflict or crux of our individual existence anyway, but rather an opportunistic tactic of both those that profit by said conflicts including war and those that would rather make a scapegoat of anyone else before even considering the possibility of being duped or short-handed by their own narrow-minded cognitive fallacies.

5. Bonus Track/Encore

Consider: There is a presidential (elector) election held every four years, congressional elections are held every two years along with gubernatorial and municipal elections, yet there are different kinds of “elections” that we make daily. Consider that a lot of the people that represent us in the branches of government first and foremost had to consider catering to businesses. There are over 500,000 elected officials in the United States government whose job it is to represent the citizens. In the same way that big companies and changes begin small, so too should we consider local changes, most notably perhaps, our awareness of what we are bringing to light in our lives.

What to do? That’s a toughie, it really is. Though here is a logical way to approach it:

• Identify the problem
• Generate alternative solutions
• Evaluate and select and alternative
• Implement and follow up on the solution⁷

Presently I’m on step one. I’m suspicious of the red handkerchief (hype) waved in front of me in advertisements (blind spots) I see regurgitated (by magicians which is any parrot that just repeats things mindlessly, really) to me and generally look away and try to find anything else going on to avoid being a little bunny (passive, still observer) in the unfolding of what little time I have left.

Works Cited

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJfoTcRA9sg
• http://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/constitution-faqs/
• https://fusiontables.google.com/DataSource?dsrcid=225439#rows:id=1
• http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html
• http://www.fairvote.org/faithless_electors
• http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/
• http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/problem-solving/overview/overview.html

Miscellaneous sites used to cross-reference:

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html#whyec

http://www.issues2000.org/askme/electors.htm

A neat video on how the Electoral College works!