I caught like five minutes of Terry McAuliffe on Tim Russert yesterday as I was packing up in San Fran.
It's all just automatic lying, all the time, and everyone is perfectly happy to play along. Disgusting. I don't know what I'd do if I thought that ultimately, what I make of my life somehow necessitates a daily dose of the bullshit they're peddling.
I don't think the nightmarish disaster that is national politics will in any way be solved until people lose interest in the spectacle, beyond derisive ridicule and moral condemnation for the whole lot of it, without distinction or equivocation.
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I don't think the nightmarish disaster that is national politics will in any way be solved until people lose interest in the spectacle,
I know I'm days late responding to this post, but the above is a very perceptive point.
My going observation these days, when talking with most anyone about politics, is that the whole thing seems to have become a sort of real-life national soap opera for many Americans. People seem really engrossed by the theater of it all, the personalities, the ongoing ups and downs and plot twists.
I think the Internet has only enhanced/exacerbated this phenomenon.
A politics that's based primarily on personalities and stories — rather than on ideas — is very dangerous to liberty. It's the reason I most detest Obama out of three (very detestable) mainstream candidates. He and his following are the most glaring symbols of personality politics and thus, to my mind, represent the greatest longterm danger.
All we can do is to keep pointing it out, and to hope that — yes — the public gets bored with the spectacle. But I don't know. "Guiding Light" has been running for more than 70 years. People are eternally infatuated with this crap.