My family, who don’t usually pay much attention to politics, have been hearing and reading a few things about Donald Trump lately, and so our dinner conversations seem to turn in his direction frequently of late. A few times the question has come up as to when the election isto be held. They think it’s coming this fall. I have to tell them, no, it’s next fall. They usually give me a look of incredulity. So long from now?!
I couldn’t agree more. Why do we have to spend nearly two years of the four years between presidential elections dealing with this? And more importantly, how do we go through this exhaustive process and still get to election day without really knowing much of importance about any of the candidates? It’s no wonder Donald Trump is doing so well. This is a beauty pageant, not a serious process for selecting the next leader of our country and the free world.
Yes, supposedly the process is designed to give us every chance to thoroughly vet the candidates, but a goodly portion of their campaign funds are spent throwing up a smokescreen around anything they think might not reflect well on them. Except Trump, whose strategy seems to be to throw up a smokescreen to conceal his good points. Oddly enough, it’s working. Nevertheless, we have a great deal of air time being given to candidates trying to convince us we shouldn’t care about what we care about. All we really seem to learn through all of this is how candidates try to conceal their lies.
It’s a great way to run a reality show, but a terrible way to pick a president. And I’ll bet I’m not the only one who is already really tired of having to hear about all of this. I have next to no say in who the final candidates will be. Do I really need to pay any attention to this until, say, October 2016? Meanwhile our current batch of leaders just love this time. They can do all sorts of stupid things while we’re all watching the circus and eating our bread, and the chances of them being noticed are significantly lower.
Democracy is the second worst form of government in the world after everything else.
What it really shows is how shallow we, as a society, are. We DO have plenty of time to really learn about the people running. We just make it a point to NOT do so. We’ve already picked “our” winner before it really starts, and we’ll be damned if we’re going to let anything as trivial as facts or reality get in the way of “our team” winning.
I think in the UK they limit political advertising to 90 days? A fabulous idea…
90 days & they actually have to say something that they actually mean rather than stabbing at eachother or saying that what they said was taken out of context again.
Now THAT’S just crazy talk!
I agree that politics is a dirty business, and I get just as tired of seeing the endless sniping, BUT, political speech, whatever speech that we find especially unpleasant, is what we especially need to protect, and is what the First Amendment was particularly made to address and ensure was NOT curtailed. As unpleasant as political speech is, try to imagine NOT being able to express yourself politically, and if you are a thinker it will suddenly seem less bothersome … or should.