Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Short version: Two and have a nice day.

Long version:
Census form arrived today. Someone pointed out to me that the census, which we are told to fill out to make sure our good government apportions things correctly, has kinda been slightly misused in the past. Specifically, when the US sent American citizens of Japanese descent to inland concentration camps (and thats what a camp used to concentrate a particular demographic is – a concentration camp) how did they know where to find all those Americans with yellow skin and funny names? From the census, apparently.

Im not saying that if I fill out the census Im going to wind up in a cattle car on a siding leading to a barbed wire encampment. I’m saying that .gov needs to know exactly one thing – how many folks live here. Race? Unimportant. That whole 3/5ths thing is no longer in effect, so whether its two Anglo-Americans or two African-Americans or two Ballistic-Americans it doesnt matter. What? You say it does matter for the sake of drawing up political districts? Dude, you think I support gerrymandering? The notion that we should draw up a political district to encompass a particular demographic in order to give them more voting power? That’s obscene. I categorically will not be a part of something that…corrupt.

So the census form sitting here gets one simple answer: two. If they send someone to the door (whose GPS coords are being logged these days by the census takers, as I read elsewhere) I’m just telling them I’m the house sitter, come back in six weeks.