Saturday, March 08, 2008

Do elections mean choice?

David Seaton's News Links
Tomorrow there are general elections in Spain. I don't like to write about internal Spanish politics in this blog, but suffice to say that Spanish voters will have some really clear choices tomorrow.

They will be permitted to choose between a party that has legalized homosexual marriage, was the first to legalize divorce and abortion, and a party that still is directly connected to the Franco dictatorship. What could be clearer than that?

What sort of choice are Americans being offered?

McCain-Clinton-Obama?

The underlying problem the Democrats have is that they masquerade as a party of the left... and they are no such thing. Gore Vidal defined it perfectly: "There is only one political party in America, the Party of Property, which has two right wings, the Democratic wing and the Republican wing."

The Republicans are simply more authentic. They are what they seem to be, while the Democrats aren't, the Democrats are like closet gays, living a lie and people are giggling behind their backs, especially the out in the open, real gays... for "gay", read authentic people of the left.

Clinton understood how this worked very well and offered a conservative package in progressive wrapping. Barack Obama understands it even better than Clinton did and offers nothing but wrapping. Emotional sensations of "change" for the sort of people that think that using a certain aftershave is a "statement".

People are not as dumb, you say?

Probably the most pro-American country in the world is Australia. They actually like Americans. So after you've watched this video, try to imagine what it would have looked like made by anybody else.

What I find depressing about this video is that my grandparents and my father were educated in little red schoolhouses in the rural Middle West and they could locate any country on the globe and knew the name of all the capitals. So it isn't genetic. Americans have been deliberately made stupid. DS

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

David, your post has been chewing on my mind since I first read it. I have to say that you ex-pats are a heavy burden to bear, and a lesser man would be daunted. But if there is an instance where I feel envy, it is towards our ex-pats. My brother moved to Canada thirty years ago and nothing irks my sensibilities more than him chuckling over our national foibles. I long to return to my blood in Quebec, but alas it will probably never happen, but if it did, I would not use the freedom to cast stones, but to offer help.

As for your video, Jay Leno does the same thing on a regular comedy skit on his show, which is the only time shot I watch the tube, with its little rabbit ears. And I occasionally laugh at the skit. More telling is the fact that the interviews are done in a shopping district, mall, or when those being interviewed are out and about shopping. It is not when we're at our best, but Leno makes light of it, as should be done. Yours wasn't that funny.

The problem, if there is one, is simply that thought, that we (citizens of the USA) are capitalists and consumers. You would have a hard time talking me out of the fruit salad I'm eating with its fruits (in early March) from Chile, the tea I'm drinking from Japan, etc, etc.

I think you haven't defined the problem anywhere near a conclusion.
Are we talking about a failure of Democracy. a failure of capitalism, a failure of an interplay between the two?

We've had worse periods. Slavery was a total failure of capitalism that existed for a couple of centuries. The civil war was a failure of Democracy that lasted a hundred years.

I for one would loved to be loved by everybody in this world. But I really don't think it should be the driving force for the decisions I make in the execution of the Democracy in which I'm participating.

As for the interplay between the two, the seeds have begun to be sewn for the readjustment of the interplay. More seeds will be sewn in November. To a great extent it may be irrelevant who becomes president. McCain would delay but make more intense this expected realignment. Obama would finally end the failure of the Civil War. Clinton, ah Clinton, the possibilities there are staggering.

Your thoughts would be interesting to hear.

Signed,

Andre (friend of uncooperative google)

David Seaton's Newslinks said...

"Are we talking about a failure of Democracy. a failure of capitalism, a failure of an interplay between the two?"
Yes.

Batocchio said...

Who cares about supposed "authenticity"? What matter is how they vote.

(By the way, all the closeted gays are in the GOP.)

Geography is typically covered in elementary school in the States, but given the widespread ignorance on the subject, high schools could really use to revisit it, perhaps as part of a current events or government class. There's also no reason the media can't provide more primers, either.

David Seaton's Newslinks said...

My father and grandmother went to "little red school houses" in the rural middle west and could locate any country in the world on the map and name the capital city.

Information is so easy to obtain nowadays, what before meant a visit to the public library, no is available at the click of a mouse. (I wonder what my grandma would of made of the phrase "click of a mouse"?). The problem is that Americans are not interested in the world. So that our foreign policy has no democratic content.