I’m looking forward to enjoying the summer. The weather promises to be great, so I’m hoping to get some travel in and to spend time with our children and grandchildren.
Intellectually, though, I know it as a time to relax. June and July are slow, and the chance of getting anything done in August is zero to none. But there is something coming in the fall. It’s an election year. That gives us about 90 days before the hate fest that is our campaign system shifts into high gear.
Starting right after Labor Day we are going to be inundated with media of all kinds that won’t tell us a single thing about either candidate’s positions. But it will be non-stop hate and vitriol. Most of the messaging will be insulting and vile, and there will be a very few that are actually funny.
But if you don’t agree with our candidate, PEOPLE WILL DIE. Hyperbole. Only hyperbole.
The creative (the actual advertisement… print, video, audio or meme) will be well executed, but depending on the magnitude of the lie, it won’t be good. We know it’s coming, too, and we know it’s going to be ugly and insulting and the spin-masters for each candidate will craft new lies for their candidate to spew.
Joseph Goebbels, the NAZI Minister of Propaganda under Hitler, once said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”
That is as true today as it was 85 years ago, and the media specialists handling all the candidates know this and will try to use this to their advantage, and to our culture’s detriment.
I’ve never been smart enough to lie, so I don’t. What’s scary about the Goebbels quote is that those who lie might “come to believe it themselves.” I can see that happening.
Unfortunately, so many candidates for elected office think they are the smartest people in the room, and that they can get away with lies and plagiarism. Sooner or later, it’s going to turn around and bite them right where they sit, and it’s not going to be comfortable … nor should it be.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans want to load their opposition candidates on the “Hate Train,” and that “Hate Train is headed right to a pointless place called Bittersville. It looks, as a matter of fact, remarkably like our state capital, or Washington D.C., for that matter. When it’s Bittersville, our elected officials don’t get much done for us.
Most votes straight down the party lines. Most like deadlock. Most work to get nothing done, or they just pay attention to the extreme stuff that panders to either parties lunatic fringe.
Remember, we pay them to be our representatives, and they don’t represent us.
The President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House control appointments to committees, and when our elected folks are out of office, that is where the money is. Knuckle under, tow the company line, or you might have to retire on a paltry $174,000 per year.
It’s sad, isn’t it?
Someone once suggested that congressional members should have to wear vests with the logos of their corporate benefactors. Not a bad idea, is it?
Historically, we have respected the Office of the President of the United States, and there was a standard level of decorum, especially during events such as the State of the Union. We have Nancy Pelosi to thank for taking a wonderful and unique event from our government and reducing it to a grandstanding political circus.
All is not lost, however, because we have some representatives who continue to talk about genuine issue. The problem is, though, they lack a large-enough megaphone to effectively sway The People. They sure do try, but those make-sense lawmakers have yet to take center stage.
So, that’s why I urge you to enjoy the time between now and September because soon than later that whistle will blow and the Hate Train will take you straight to Bittersville.
well said,great coloum;but keep in mind what was said about Nazi germany: “it’s not that the lies were so believable,but they WANTED to believe them”
We have Nancy Pelosi to thank for turning the SOTU address into a grandstanding political circus? C’mon, Dolph. You must be smarter than that. How about republican Joe Wilson yelling “You lie!” in 2009 during Obama’s SOTU address? Marjorie Taylor Greene showing up to the SOTU with a balloon (look up the story as to why), then during a later SOTU wearing attention-getting Trump-themed garb instead of professional-looking business attire, shouting during the President’s speech and carrying out other antics, and other republicans acting in childish ways. Democrats aren’t pure as the driven snow by any stretch, but your calling out Pelosi without calling out the even more brazen and childish antics by those on the other side of the aisle shows you simply have a 1-sided opinion and are representative of the HUGE problem this country has with division and partisan politics. Again, I thought you were smarter than to make comments like this. I thought you were better than that. It turns out you’re part of the problem.
Heckling has been part of the gallery during the State of the Union since its inception. During my lifetime, the Watergate Babies (all Democrats) walked out on President Ford, Bush 43 was heckled over his concern for Social Security. I was OK with the Democrats quietly walking out during Trump’s 2020 SOTU. Look back at any of Reagan’s SOTU – both sides delivered their approval and dissaproval without acting like children or disrespecting the office of the President. Pelosi’s tearing up her advance copy of the address demeaned the office much more than the man. But Mike, your gaslighting is uncalled for – but expected. Thanks for reading, and responding.
No gaslighting, Dolph – just providing factual details to illustrate and support a valid point. As I clearly stated previously, neither party is perfect and neither party is pure. You chose to call out 1 particular act by 1 particular politician from 1 particular political party and sought to hold them up as the person to thank for supposedly turning the SOTU into a “grandstanding political circus” without acknowledging others, many from the opposite party, who’d done far more irrational and outlandish things on the floor. Was Pelosi’s act classy? No. Was it beneath her and the office she held at the time? Yes. Was it the lowest, most irrational, politically motivated stunt we’ve seen in recent history? Not by a long shot.