This Thursday’s post comes to us from Stephen! Thank you as always, Stephen!
Now that the Democrat field has thinned from about 300 candidates down to only two, or something similar to that, it is time to wax a little political and pragmatic for a post. Not really. I’d rather place the politics into a more proper context along with the current death crisis going to doom us all yet again as we are all randomly attacked by Mexican beer. As you shall recall, this particular website started in the wake of the last presidential election originating and emanating from associations formed in the comment sections of the Twitchy.com website aggregating Twitter feed, news and trends, resulting from some disparate views of proper moderation and commenter decorum.
Not that another election season has come around, on a site such as this centered around topical, political, and philosophical discourse one naturally expects the daily topics to be a serious and sober reflection of the events of the day and observations of trends and ideas of society.
Reflecting upon the current political climate, lurching awkwardly from crisis to manufactured crisis, a running theme emerges. It is just not that serious. No, I mean all of it.
When the Democrat primary was filled to the brim with more than a score of candidates all vying to stand out from the pack and emerge as a leader of the party, we witnessed exactly nothing.
Each and every candidate espoused indecipherably vague yet virtually identical policy appeals for promises of free giveaways of the public funds to leftist core constituents of students, illegals, perverse, and the unhealthy. Every candidate promising to gouge the rich for their sins of exploitations of those highly skilled, educated, and diligent hamburger-flippers and coffee shop baristas.
One was left to ponder why so many people were spending so much time, money, effort, and angst to differentiate between these cookie-cutout candidates who all looked, spoke, and thought alike.
Slowly the field began to winnow out by delving into the pasts of those career political figureheads to find times and places in their past in which their pandering differed from their current climate of pandering to show that their pandering was so much less sincere than their fellow candidates, mostly in an effort to dissuade financial contributors to the point where they would be unable to pay their staff of hired sycophants and thus be forced to drop out of the race.
All of which informed the politically focused segment of our society of precisely nothing which they did not already know, especially given that even today nine out of ten voters still have absolutely no idea what the candidates actually believe or espouse
Whether this is because they had completely forgot what they learned about those candidate’s political views four years previously, or that they never bothered to learn in the first place because the overwhelming majority of people have adopted the opinion that all politicians are pretty much alike and one is just as good as any other, or that they have yet to begin to pay attention to the race because the real election is still almost eight months away and they won’t pay attention until about two weeks before the election, no one can really say.
This widespread indifference and ignorance is largely responsible for the political focus upon name recognition far more than any political acumen, and explains why the contest comes down to two candidates who have ran an failed previously, because failed campaigns purchase name recognition with a populace which will shortly forget whatever policy a candidate has stated that they fervently believe at that moment.
To be fair to the voters, or more properly the poll respondents as many candidates are eliminated prior to the first vote ever being cast, this undifferentiated soup of bland look-alike candidates encourages that indifference. And, to be fair to the candidates, the voter ignorance and apathy about any and all policy differences, the discussion of which causes the voters’ eyes to glaze over, discourages them from taking bold stances which can only set them up for public criticism as not a true party representative.
So, how serious is this political season? A candidate showing obvious signs of dementia, who has name recognition from being Vice President for eight years is running against a crazy, angry socialist yelling at clouds who is riding on the name recognition of being the also ran in the last presidential primary.
You have an 77 year old white leftist verses a 78 year old white leftist spouting “radical” versus “electable”, but really does anyone believe anything they propose would pass through a divided Congress even if they would win?
The voters support their candidate pretty much like rooting for a favorite sports team, primarily because he’s not the other guy. It is the same in the Democrat primary as we know we will see in the general election. It is not support for “our candidate”, it is opposition to that “other candidate”. This election is negative politics writ large, cheerleading for their candidate just to oppose someone else.
Outside of the political arena, we see people who largely respond politically to mocking opposing ideas, issues, and candidates but remain completely oblivious to any real knowledge, discussion, or familiarity. If they think about politics at all is it a vague emotional response largely reflective of the most vocal expressions of their friends and associates.
We hear that college kids are more leftist. Of course, that has been true for decades upon decades, but it is increasing. Mostly it is increasing because those college communities have become politically monolithic so if everyone else supports Candidate X, so will they, just don’t press them for any real reason why they do so.
Which is the real point. Most people do not, and will not, care about politics. Increasingly I have noticed that this generalization extends to the politicians themselves. How much do you really believe that Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, or Chuck Schumer actually care about any of the political issues of the day? For that matter, do you really believe that either Sanders or Biden really care about the issues, or do you imagine that they only care about how well those issues appeal to their supporters?
You can watch candidates “espouse” positions, but never see them actually debate the merits of those same issues. When challenged, the best they will ever do is contradict, distract, or dismiss the challenge. Are the people voting on the laws for society really affected by those laws that they pass?
Take for example the recent “issues” of raising the minimum wage. Are those members of Congress working for minimum wage? Are they even in the private sector paying out those wages? The problem with career politicians is that they become disconnected to their taxing, spending, and regulatory schemes because for the most part they are not moving in and out of the private sector to be there. (Consulting and lobbying does not count.)
Or look at turning colleges into public education (that’s really what the making college “free” would actually do, turn college into an extended high school). Are these Congressmen laboring under student debt? Are these Congressmen creditors who have lent these students money? (I know, student loans are now federal government loans no longer funded by private banks.)
So if the politicians are largely disconnected from the issues and the voters are by and large disconnected from the issues, can you really say that the political issues even matter in the slightest degree? Does it matter that a Democrat candidate proclaims socialism or another forgets that he is even running for president, so long as they are not those evil Republicans?
You look at these candidates, and really any candidates in the last twenty-five years, for these offices or even the sillier statements from candidates in state legislatures or even city councils, and wonder if anyone is even listening to the stupidity that some of them say?
A member of the US Representatives can legitimately ask if the island of Guam is going to capsize because too many people are stationed on the island, yet he is not laughed out of office for being a complete imbecile. Further, he is re-elected to office time and again.
It is in this environment that we have Candidate Debates on important issues of the day, which don’t debate anything. But, in all fairness, the issues are not a fraction as important as they are pretending anyway.
This election is, well, boring. The candidates are not interesting. The issues are stupid. The outcome of the primaries are already well known. The outcome of the general is equally certain. People will yet spend enormous sums of money to effect no significant change at all on campaigns that any rational person knew were doomed to fail before they began.
And the vast majority of people will barely notice and will this time next year probably still not know who is president, but they will know the intimate details of celebrities’ personal lives.
