Kasich
Gee, Jim, how come you keep forgetting Kasich? How come the press doesn't cover Kasich? Of the remaining four GOP candidates, Kasich is probably the one we could live with, so why aren't we talking about him? And so on and so forth, inbox infinitum.
Why?
Because American political contests aren't about that.
We Americans love to believe in some great Plebeian ideal of The Republic but it just ain't so and never has been. American democracy isn't about ideas or intelligence or qualifications or even current events - or we'd have a a list of minimum requirements and a test for participation, both for politicians AND for voters.
It's about entertainment.
Democracy in this country is a sporting event, a popularity contest, and in the age of social media and 24 hour news coverage on thousands of channels combined with information saturation - little of which is in any way factual but by design and desire instead consists largely of people shouting at each in an orgy of confirmation bias - more and more our political process has become reality TV playing to the basest elements of our society. In point of fact, it is now nearly impossible to tell the political process from Reality TV shows like The Apprentice or Survivor or Dancing With The Stars. It's all fake confessionals and contrived confrontation and drama.
And we LIKE it that way.
Kasich just isn't pretty or popular or photogenic or dynamic enough to command the mob's attention.
In America, the press was given enumerated protection under the Constitution because the Founders knew that for a republic to work properly the citizens must be educated and informed. But like the Second Amendment, the First has been perverted into a distorted caricature of freedom. In America the media is in business to make money. All else is secondary. And so if the mob is not interested in Kasich, then the press isn't either.
Trump is the moneymaker and he knows it - he is after all, a Reality TV star. The more outrageous his behavior, the better the headlines. Any story with Trump in the title is surefire clickbait. So he gets the coverage. To a lesser and lesser extent, Cruz, Clinton, Sanders, Rubio ... and last boring and uninteresting Kasich.
Why aren't we talking about Kasich? Because nobody cares about him, that's why, and if Americans truly gave a considered and thoughtful damn about who leads their republic, well, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place.
It's just human nature.
We can moan and groan and wish it wasn't so, but if your argument begins "Dammit! If people would just..." you're going to be forever disappointed.
Gee, Jim, how come you keep forgetting Kasich? How come the press doesn't cover Kasich? Of the remaining four GOP candidates, Kasich is probably the one we could live with, so why aren't we talking about him? And so on and so forth, inbox infinitum.
Why?
Because American political contests aren't about that.
We Americans love to believe in some great Plebeian ideal of The Republic but it just ain't so and never has been. American democracy isn't about ideas or intelligence or qualifications or even current events - or we'd have a a list of minimum requirements and a test for participation, both for politicians AND for voters.
It's about entertainment.
Democracy in this country is a sporting event, a popularity contest, and in the age of social media and 24 hour news coverage on thousands of channels combined with information saturation - little of which is in any way factual but by design and desire instead consists largely of people shouting at each in an orgy of confirmation bias - more and more our political process has become reality TV playing to the basest elements of our society. In point of fact, it is now nearly impossible to tell the political process from Reality TV shows like The Apprentice or Survivor or Dancing With The Stars. It's all fake confessionals and contrived confrontation and drama.
And we LIKE it that way.
Kasich just isn't pretty or popular or photogenic or dynamic enough to command the mob's attention.
In America, the press was given enumerated protection under the Constitution because the Founders knew that for a republic to work properly the citizens must be educated and informed. But like the Second Amendment, the First has been perverted into a distorted caricature of freedom. In America the media is in business to make money. All else is secondary. And so if the mob is not interested in Kasich, then the press isn't either.
Trump is the moneymaker and he knows it - he is after all, a Reality TV star. The more outrageous his behavior, the better the headlines. Any story with Trump in the title is surefire clickbait. So he gets the coverage. To a lesser and lesser extent, Cruz, Clinton, Sanders, Rubio ... and last boring and uninteresting Kasich.
Why aren't we talking about Kasich? Because nobody cares about him, that's why, and if Americans truly gave a considered and thoughtful damn about who leads their republic, well, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place.
It's just human nature.
We can moan and groan and wish it wasn't so, but if your argument begins "Dammit! If people would just..." you're going to be forever disappointed.