Eclectic Views

    
For me, "THEY" = the spin doctors (Karl Rove, et al),
but substitute your own favorite devils.
  

    
Seems like every two years I get my hopes up, and then get them smashed, 
as it again becomes apparent that a huge percentage of voters just aren't 
paying attention, or rather are only paying attention to con artists and
charlatans.

So, someone please save me from this and tell me what dreck they'll be 
serving up this year to keep a brainlock on the sheep.
  

    
Which flock?

For the right it is safe  to assume a substrate of the world of terror
supporting claims of victimization by the liberal media,
anti-government bias(excepting nation bombing and building as well as
government contracts) and pandering to self-righteousness.

For the left it is safe to assume a substrate of "nice" government
supporting programs for all, states rights (as long as the national
government is not left), judicial activism (proper, that is) and the
idea that US foreign policy and influence makes everything happen
around the world.

Above all, the US is the center of the universe.  One of the benefits
of living in a small country: being saved from such megalomania.
  

    
Which flock indeed!

As you probably guessed, from the reference to Karl Rove if nothing else,
it was the right I was thinking of, but I'm not going to try to argue that
there's anything invalid about turning it around and applying it to the
left too.

Truth be told, the voters on the left look more like sheep to me, and those 
on the right more like a herd of snakes, but that's no basis for polite 
discourse, nor is it anything close to being objectively descriptive.

People are pretty much all similarly motivated, at an emotional level.  
They only start being separable into groups when you fold in the notions
that are layered over the feelings, and especially the hot buttons those
notions expose.  Each set of notions has its own set of hot buttons, and
politics is largely about the art of hitting hot buttons shared by a large
enough subset of the electorate to propel you into office, while avoiding
those that fragment your constituency.

From where I sit there appears to be a larger disconnect between the
application of this art and policy on the right than on the left, which is
to say that politicians on the right compartmentalize what they have to do
to get into office as distinguished from what they do once there more than
those on the left - and they've become very good at it, bolstered by market
research and clever coaching.

So good, in fact, that national and statewide elections now tend to be more
about the art of politics than about the substance of policy, and those who
wind up in office more beholding to the contributors who paid for the
market research and media blitz than to the people who placed trust in them
through their votes.

This leaves me wanting to call attention to the man behind the curtain, 
whether on the right or the left, and make it more difficult for him to 
operate in the shadows.
  

    
>Truth be told, the voters on the left look more like sheep to me, and
those on the right more like a herd of snakes,<

There is enough naivity to go around. Perhaps we have snakes among the
sheep and sheep among the snakes.  To push the analogy a bit further,
perhaps we have two herds of sheep and both shepherds are being
successfully lobbied by the wolves.
  

    
Could someone come up with a better plan to get people to actually
vote? Seriously, American Idol gets a higher voter turn-out than the
Presidential elections.
  

    
Solution seems obvious, then.  Turn the election into a reality show.
  

    
With Simon providing commentary.
  

    
With phone in voting.
  

    
Let's see, how could this work?

When the list had been whittled down to two, give contestants, er, I mean
candidates, a set of scenarios, say three, and a week to work up how they
would respond to each, not knowing which of the three they'd actually be
called upon to present.  Then, come show time, they'd each present one in a
mock press conference format, debate over the other, and each be given a
fourth they'd had no opportunity to prepare for, and asked to act out how
they'd go about developing a response, with actors playing the roles of
chief of staff, cabinet secretaries, head of the joint chiefs, U.N.
ambassador, and so forth.
  

    <scribbled by satyr Wed 19 Jul 06 08:15>
  

    
The view of the talking head stabilizes with its eyes just above the center
of the screen.  Its voice has a droning quality that makes it difficult to
concentrate on the words.

This goes on for several long minutes, then, as if a switch had been 
thrown, you begin to hear not the words being spoken but the subtext...

    "They can't be trusted; you have to watch them constantly."
    "Whatever they say, believe the opposite."
    "Everything will be fine, if we can just keep them from spoiling it."
    "Don't listen to them."
    "We know what we're doing."

...then just as you're beginning to get into a receptive mood a loud noise 
nearby breaks you out of it, and as your attention slips off to something 
else, you think you glimpse the screen subtly flashing at about 8 Hz and 
the eyes of the talking head rotating in opposite directions.
  

    
Then the talking head starts to stutter uncontrollably and to rotate
left and right trying to overcome it.  Finally yellow and black
diagonal stripes fill the screen, then fade to a commercial.
  

    
> ...then just as you're beginning to get into a receptive mood a loud noise 
>  nearby breaks you out of it, and as your attention slips off to something 
>  else, you think you glimpse the screen subtly flashing at about 8 Hz and 
>  the eyes of the talking head rotating in opposite directions.

You guys ever watch "They Live"?   You'd like it.
  

    
fnord
  

    
>Could someone come up with a better plan to get people to actually
vote? Seriously, American Idol gets a higher voter turn-out than the
Presidential elections.<

American Idol may be getting a higher turn-out because it really
matters much more that who is president.  The message here is that
entertainment is what really matters. 

Perhaps getting more people schooling in the entertainment industry to
run for office would work, say, standup comedians with ad lib skills. 

Another approach is to turn all issues into moral issues to get the
self-righteous juices flowing. 
  

    
Or maybe it's the voting method.  (Don't they do it two at a time?  To
narrow in on "the best?")

Guy on the radio was talking about how Idol has, at its best, about 30
million viewers.  That's a huge audience by today's standards.  But when the
Beverly Hillbillies was #1 in the ratings, it would get sixty million
viewers.  (Then again, I guess the highest rated of its shows was on in the
midst of the Kennedy Assassination, so maybe there was some holdover from
news?)  So maybe it's about choices.
  

    
Politicians are, quite understanbly afraid of being ridiculed.

Ridicule is how Nixon beat McGovern, and how Reagan beat Jimmy Carter.  
It's also how Bush got close enough to actually beating Gore to be
shoehorned into office and how he beat Kerry.

Bush vs. Gore is somewhat of a special case, because it highlights why
being afraid of ridicule is couterproductive.  Bush didn't "win" because
anything much beyond the association with Clinton stuck to Gore, rather 
he did as well as he did because he came off as the guy to whom nothing
sticks -- the old teflon coat trick.  Think Telly Savalas cool.  He made 
Gore look like a hothead.
  

    
Also, he's the first candidate, dating back to his run against Ann Richards,
who has a response to the ridicule.  The guy is a target rich environment
for ridicule.  Rove had to counter it, and did, by making anyone who attacks
his candidate look like a sourpuss or mean spirited or whatever.  And it
continues to work today, only people are finally seeing that it wasn't mean-
spiritedness.  Those comments were astute observations.
  

    

I think this is somewhat due to the culture-war split, though it's not
black and white (uh, red and blue) or a "war" except in media commentary 
or at the extremes.  In fact, framing that division probably benefits the 
most conservative minority, seems to me.  Still, we are a nation with  
greatly varied communty standards and values.

So if you ridicule from within one camp, and are not clear how that plays 
to the other side, your mockery can look like bullying or snobbery
to the other side while at the same time it plays as speaking truth 
to entrenched interests, or showing some education and forethought, say, 
to your allies.    

It's easier to set up spin that ridicule is meanspirited when there 
is a cultural chasm like that.