Drip Drip Drip

Okay. So. There are about a billion  polarizing/repugnant/cruel/wrong/racist/sexist/misogynistic/terrifying/dehumanizing/just plain awful things that are a result of the 2016 election. Hopefully the November 2018 election gives this deluge of awfulness a chance to slow down and in 2020 we can turn off this damn hose and start the slow process of healing.

But I've got one more water metaphor for you. And it's that I think one of the most heartbreaking takeaways from the 2016 election is how my individual vote meant absolutely everything and absolutely nothing at the same time. Because my vote, along with everyone else's (who actually did vote that is) is one drop in the bucket. 

Think about it. One drop. Not enough to make a real difference in a bucket. But if you only have a set number of drops to be distributed across a few buckets, the drops are likely to unevenly balance, and one bucket becomes fuller and wins by default. 
Here is a visual example involving maths: 

There are 10 drops and 4 buckets with different colors and levels of viability. Say those drops are dispensed as so: 

                                    drip 
  drip                           drip

  drip                           drip        drip

  drip           drip          drip       drip

(viable) (not viable) (WTF) (not viable)

Red wins by default because as individual buckets, blue, green, and orange each have less than the red total. So by placing a drop/vote in a nonviable bucket thinking it wouldn't matter anyway and didn't count... it really didn't. And yet it really did.

If you voted I'm glad you did so. I really am. But I'm also really pissed at you if threw your vote into a nonviable bucket and screwed up the math. Because now we have about a billion polarizing/repugnant/cruel/wrong/racist/sexist/misogynistic/terrifying/dehumanizing/just plain awful things to deal with.

Thanks.