Sunday, March 24, 2019                                          6:35 PM

Watch Your TV Show   (2019Mar24)

There’s a running cliché among today’s politicians: ‘We can’t get anything done if we don’t get elected (or re-elected) first’. They devote huge amounts of time to fund-raising phone calls. They basically have to buy in to the popularity-contest aspect of politics—and tell themselves that Election itself is axiomatic.

If, however, we remember that everyone is replaceable, we can imagine a candidate that cares more about what he or she stands for, and plans for, than whether or not they get elected. Wouldn’t it be funny if a candidate won on the issues alone—sans PR wave, sans stadium rallies and hat sales?

How, you may ask, would they rebut attack-ads without any media budget? They wouldn’t. They would tell reporters it wasn’t true (or was true) and hope that people saw a smear-job when one was aired. They would use the Internet and Facebook to make public statements and forward policies, for free. Voters would say to themselves, “At least this person isn’t wasting millions on worthless commercials”.

Would they lose? Sure. They already have been losing—although, on that score, I’d have to say our third-party candidates are all one-trick ponies, equally unprepared to address the problem of modern democratic self-governance. But the real question is: Would they always lose?

Can people learn to look at the results after elections, instead of focusing on the empty campaign rhetoric before elections? Why even have campaigns, when everyone knows that rule one is: ‘Say anything—no one expects you to follow through’?

I have to laugh when I see pundits on cable discussing what the voters will be sensitive to, or averse to, from Democratic candidates. This after half the country didn’t vote, a quarter voted for a pervert, and slightly more than a quarter voted for HRC, who ‘lost’ anyway! How can anyone look at Trump and, with a straight face, say that any Democrat is too far in the other direction? Or, for that matter, how can any democracy led by Trump claim any judgement at all in its voters?

Voters? More like little children, being lied to and led down the primrose path to destruction. America’s success has made its people lazy and ignorant—and America’s rich and powerful are corrupting that success into a sleazy money pit we’ll all be screaming to emigrate from, soon enough. Go on, go back to watching your TV show. What do you care?