VOTE; IF YOU DO NOT, PLEASE RESTRAIN YOURSELF FROM COMPLAINING.

[st0ut717]

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

Winston Churchill

 

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Sir Winston Churchill

[SeattlePioneer]

Millions of people keep attending baseball games despite the fact that their team keeps getting a shellacking and doesn't win the World's Series.

 

Politics is no worse.

 

Personally, I find the idea that the government is actually going to cater to your views a remarkable one. Only rarely do I vote for people who clearly reflect my views and who actually get elected.

 

Most of life is a compromise. Why should politics be different?

 

And I think we underrate our politicians. The most important job politicians have is to create a system where we can live together in peace. We have done a remarkably fine job of that, by and large.

 

And one of the great sports in the United States is not baseball or football, but the game of politics, which anyone can play as much as they might wish. You can PLAY as much as you wish, but you have no guarantee you will win by doing so.

 

Personally I was a liberal and Democrat from 1965 to 1984, with some time out as a left wing radical from 1967-1970 or so. Since 1984 I've been a Reagan Republican and more recently a Tea Party type.

 

I look forward to an entertaining evening of election returns tonight, perhaps winning a few and certainly losing a few. In politics like Cub Scouts, we do our best...

[packsaddle]

I'll just grade papers. I could have cleaned a septic tank and still had a better evening than watching the returns.

[Stosh]

I have a future son-in-law that works high up in the Pentagon and is one of the top advisers for international politics. He keeps informing me that the US political scene is no different than the world stage except it's a lot smaller. I asked him which of the countries did the best at it and he said North Korea. Keep your people uninformed, saber rattle a lot, maybe do some posturing, and a little irate rhetoric, so the people think you are doing great things and basically sit back and do nothing. You're not there to actually accomplish much, just keep the people who keep you in office happy regardless of their plight in life. People don't mind being dirt poor if that's all they know about the world.

 

I just like my dad's advice the best. All politicians are crooks. If you want your preferences done in the government make sure you have the biggest crook who can accomplish the most. He also would say, one can't always tell who the biggest crook is because when their mouths move they are all lying.

 

Stosh

[TAHAWK]

Would cBS hire him today? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/andy-rooney-dont-vote/

[packsaddle]

,,, make sure you have the biggest crook who can accomplish the most. He also would say, one can't always tell who the biggest crook is because when their mouths move they are all lying.

Stosh

 

Been there, done that. Voted for Tricky Dicky. And it worked, sort of. I just wish he'd been successful at his attempt to push socialized medicine through but I guess that 'other thing' got in the way.

[Sentinel947]

 

Been there, done that. Voted for Tricky Dicky. And it worked, sort of. I just wish he'd been successful at his attempt to push socialized medicine through but I guess that 'other thing' got in the way.

 

The other thing being bombing neutral countries? or wire tapping political opponents in a reelection campaign he already had in the bag?

[SeattlePioneer]

<< He also would say, one can't always tell who the biggest crook is because when their mouths move they are all lying.

Stosh>>

 

 

 

Winston Churchill once opined that "The Sermon on the Mount is the last word in personal ethics, but it's not the basis on which ministers of government are given their portfolios."

 

 

 

If all politicians lie, perhaps people should think about why that's true.

 

I suggest there are two reasons:

 

1. Sometimes the truth just wont do. Suppose you are President and telling the truth about an incident would start a war that could be avoided if you lie. What you lie to save the peace?

 

2. Politics and government power can be and often is used to manufacture the "truth." The power to write history and current events in ways that carry out your political agenda is one of the enormously attract perquisites of political power. And if you have that power, it may be pretty hard to know what the absolute truth may be in many situations.

 

 

 

[NJCubScouter]

And we have a news media that would make Jos. Goebbels proud.

 

Well Stosh, here I was mostly agreeing with what you were saying, and then I came to this. Really? Do you really have to do that? Unlike the last time I made a comment along these lines, this time I'm not going to invoke any alleged "law" of the Internet here. But just as a matter of common sense, don't you see that a ridiculous analogy like that doesn't lend any support for what you are saying, but actually detracts from it? Unless I have somehow missed all the death camps in our country, and all the massacres of U.S. residents by the military, with the compliant news media covering it all up, why do you need to bring the Nazis into it? It's just ridiculous.

[TAHAWK]

Stosh invokes the memory of the man whose title was "Minister of Propaganda" and who is often cited as creating the label of "Big Lie" for a certain propaganda tactic. Actually, it was Uncle Adolph who said that if one tells a "colossal" lie few would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." The tactic was used by "Big Brother" in 1984. It is studied in journalism schools and national capitals to this day..

 

I do not agree that invoking Herr G really fits. It seems more a matter of what the media elect not to cover that outright lying - ignoring whatever would hurt the side they pimp for. (Sorry that I split the infinitive from its object.) There is also the matter of confabulation - creating a fantasy world because reality is so painful - like Tom Brokejaw telling the world last night that the election results compel the R's to give the President more of what he wants. And then there is ignorance. That could explain the repeated references to "machine guns" or "assault weapons" and showing pictures of fully-automatic weapons firing when the murderers among us have semi-automatic weapons and, in fact, mostly use hand guns. (Life NRA member and vet John F. Kennedy surely knew the difference.) Then there is unconscious bias by people who just know they are superior types to the ignorant masses. So the deliberate practitioners of the Big Lie, like Michael Moore and Michael Savage, seem in the minority. Maybe just call the media "propagandists."

 

Further, Stosh, it is not the Big Lie as defined by Hitler because the credibility of the media is right down there with politicians and used car salesmen. Almost everyone knows they are misleading. In the last gallup pole I can find, confidence in TV news was at 19% That may help explain the disconnect between media support of candidates and election results.

 

Rather than Nazis, it may be more apt to hopefully invoke a Republican who said that you "cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

 

 

[CalicoPenn]

I think Seattle is absolutely right - just because you don't vote doesn't mean you don't get to complain - but as I tell everyone who hasn't voted and starts to complain, you may have a right to complain but since you didn't vote, you haven't earned the right to be taken seriously.

 

Media pumping out propaganda? There is no need for propaganda when your target audience, in this case "The American People" are so stupid that they'll believe anything they hear without question. Coupled with a Media that is more than capable of publishing stupid stuff all on their own, and Goebels would be drooling at how easy it would be here. The media-caused panic over Ebola is a prime example. 4 people brought it from overseas - only 1 died - and 2 people caught it here - both survived quite nicely - and the media calls it an Outbreak? We're attempting to quarantine nurses who don't have the virus and think that's ok but no one thinks about quarantining people with the flu which kills up to 39 thousand people a year? We're refusing to let kids go to school who have visited Africa? We're demanding that teachers self quarantine after visiting East African countries that are farther away from places in Africa with Ebola that places in the US that had Ebola patients to the schools? We've got people "self-quarantining" because they were in Africa 2 years ago? Yeah - no one needs to put together a program of propaganda - the sheeple are already brain dead.

[Stosh]

 

Well Stosh, here I was mostly agreeing with what you were saying, and then I came to this. Really? Do you really have to do that? Unlike the last time I made a comment along these lines, this time I'm not going to invoke any alleged "law" of the Internet here. But just as a matter of common sense, don't you see that a ridiculous analogy like that doesn't lend any support for what you are saying, but actually detracts from it? Unless I have somehow missed all the death camps in our country, and all the massacres of U.S. residents by the military, with the compliant news media covering it all up, why do you need to bring the Nazis into it? It's just ridiculous.

 

I believe others caught the point of the comment, sorry not everyone did.

 

You are correct, we haven't had concentration camps in America since 1945 so only the older generation actually experienced them. And because the Indians were foreign nations in the way of our colonial expansion, "The only good Indian, is a dead Indian," doesn't apply here. And of course handing out small pox blankets to reservation Indians, (again with the concentration camps), and Wounded Knee don't apply but I'm thinking the Ludlow Massacre might show what the military can do to it's citizens, such as women and children. Shall we talk about how the US was the last developed country to abolish slavery? But as we all know, "those people" weren't anymore American citizens than the Indians.

 

A five minute Google research project will really tone down one self-righteous pride in America. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only time in human history where nuclear power has ever been used against another human being and we can be proud of the fact that we were able to start it all. I'm thinking we've done a pretty good job of spinning away our political ambitions over the years. If you don't believe me, take a look at a "history" book in today's schools that let our children know that our Founding Fathers were terrorist.

 

And I didn't bring the Nazis into it, I brought the gentleman who was the master of media propaganda into it. As far as good old Honest Abe, it was his intention to send all the slaves back to Africa. In '63 with the Emancipation Proclamation it is surprising that only the slaves in the rebellious states were freed and only to economically cripple the Confederate ability to wage war and keep England and France from recognizing Confederate sovereighnty. As a matter of fact up until that point, if the Confederates would have laid down their arms they could have kept their slavery. Spin that one for the Great Emancipator who emancipated no one. It wasn't until the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that slavery was abolished and that happened well after Lincoln's death.

 

It's time to take off the rose colored glasses Pollyanna. The US political system isn't Kansas anymore.

 

Stosh

[EagleScout441]

I vote so I can whine and complain all I want.

 

Stosh

 

One more non-voting year here

[MattR]

​I vote because I have a duty to my country. I'm a scoutmaster because I believe in the Scout Oath and Law. Neither my country nor the BSA is perfect. Of course, neither is my family but I love them anyway. It has nothing to do with rose colored glasses or false pride. It has to do with believing in something and working to improve it. After that I can only have a beer and not worry about it.

[TAHAWK]

Doing scorn is easy. But I would rather have one MattR than a dozen H. L. Menckens