As a political junkie I used to watch all of the debates. I even watched the Vice Presidential debates including the trainwreck when Al Gore, Dan Quayle and Admiral Stockdale had a three way debate between some of the dumbest human beings to ever walk this earth. I pretty much stopped watching several election cycles ago, mostly because they are so moronic. Watching two people lie to an audience while calling each other names isn’t all that entertaining.
Needless to say I didn’t watch the most recent “debate” between Orange Man and Cumala Whorris. I figured it would be a disaster and from what I have heard, I was right. Lies and moronic rantings accompanied by the two “moderators” doing everything they could to trip up Trump and prop up Cumala. To be fair, it sounds like Cumala wasn’t as horrible as most people expected her to be and that seems to be inexplicably helping her in the polls: “Hey, she didn’t come off as a moron quite as much as I expected, she has my vote!”. Of course all of the polling is bullshit and I assume most of the polls aren’t even actually polling anyone, and are just reporting poll results based on whatever They want them to say.
On social media the last couple of days I have seen a lot of people bemoaning how dumb the debates were and wishing we had two better candidates making better points. I understand the sentiment but my comment to most of those lamenting the state of our political discourse was something like this:
If we had two moderately intelligent candidates on stage who had an actual grasp of the issues, like Rand Paul for the Republicans and perhaps Tim Ryan for the Democrats, and if we also had a couple of reasonably neutral and intelligent moderators like Jim Lehrer and if the candidates actually debated on the issues, bringing up facts and presenting policy positions that were argued on their merits….
….how many Americans could have followed the conversation?
I am not trying to be an asshole here, I am quite serious. Would even 10% of registered voters be smart enough and have the basic background knowledge to understand the issues and the points being raised? I am not even talking about a really deep-dive debate between two hard core, think-tank policy wonks, just two moderately intelligent politicians that are reasonably well-versed in the issues. Start talking about the issue of legal immigration and birthright citizenship, getting down in the weeds a little bit, and the vast majority of American voters would start to drool. Get into something deeper like foreign policy and their eyes would roll back into their heads and they would go into convulsions.
We have dimwits throwing feces at each other on stage in lieu of debates because that is all most voters can handle. I personally know a ton of people that are my age or older who have been diligently voting for decades and have very loud political opinions that don’t know a damn thing about policy and couldn’t give an intelligent answer to basic civics questions if you stopped them on the street. The problem with our “democratic” system is that even in a Republic, the people choosing those that will represent them are mostly ignorant or flat out stupid and therefore the people chosen to represent them are the sort that appeal to ignorant and/or flat out stupid voters. There are some fairly intelligent elected officials and even a few that are very bright but they are the rare exception rather than the rule.
In short we get the political candidates, political campaigns and political debates that appeal to the majority of voters who are kinda dumb and woefully uninformed. There is no point lamenting the quality of political candidates when the quality of voters is so poor.
Essentially, the old saw that people “get the government that they deserve” is spot on. The whole idea of the universal franchise and unlimited participatory democracy is insanity. Just saw a study claiming only 44% of “Americans” (term undefined and thus meaningless) read a single book last year. 99% of blacks don’t/can’t read, and about 90% of mestizos. Add in all the White kids addicted to their phones and social media, and the boomers addicted to tv, and I’d bet it’s more like 25% if that.
I think that your description of Admiral Stockdale as being one of the “dumbest human beings to ever walk the earth” is uncalled for. You are a smart guy and I suspect that you know Stockdale’s history. And if you don’t you should read up on him. He was mocked for his debate performance, but he was defended at the time by a well-known celebrity: “Now I know (Stockdale’s name has) become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let’s look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including your new President, chose not to dirty their hands with. He had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate because those fucking animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn’t spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University, he’s a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television.”
Other than that, loved the post. BZ
James Stockdale was anything but dumb. Naive definitely. Man set up a spy ring in the Hanoi Hilton to get word back to the states. Cut his head and smashed his face with a stool so the NVA couldn’t put him on TV. Lead the first air strike into North Vietnam. Was the last man to get on the freedom plane out of North Vietnam. Made sure all his men got on first. He was a test pilot, Air Wing commander, president of the Naval War College and after retirement from the Navy, president of the Citadel.
Your a smart guy Arthur and I love your blog, but you’re wrong about James Stockdale.
I have taken to telling people foaming out their civnat face sphincters about the political theater is that we don’t have a leadership problem, we have a people problem.
Yeah that goes over well.
I’ve also long been telling my egalitarian betters that the desires germinating in the potted morality of their couldesac striver greenhouses are not shared by the polity at large.
Not by any stretch. They joke about heads on pikes, to which I agree fully, but they fail to realize that should their own glorious revolution happen it would be their heads as well.
The noble ideas of self-organizing “principles” are a luxury product just like the corollaries of our commie comrades.
Even so, most Whites mistake their ability to extract their personal economic benefits for said principles. Covid stripped that naked.
The reality is there is no “we” no matter how you slice it at this point.
What we do have are masses of consumers, a tiny fraction of overachieving producers, and a bazaar of middlemen and agents and grifters swimming in chlorinated feces and calling it a pool party.
From a cognitive perspective it’s clear we are a “nation” of addicts. No bell curve has survived the dopamine-novelty-physiological pit short of a supply side collapse. And that kind of cold-turkey cure puts quite a dent.
“And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television.”
I second BumblePuppy’s comment. Admiral Stockdale is a genuine badass. if just 5% of American, real Americans had his balls, tenacity, wit, intelligence, verisimilitude, America would be a much better place. But he was mocked because….
” the quality of political candidates when the quality of voters is so poor.”
Some of his better quotes:
1. Do the right thing even if it means dying like a dog when no one’s there to see you do it.
2. It is in disaster, not success, that the heros and the bums really get sorted out.
3. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be
It would be an honor just to shine this mans shoes. We should be invoking Admiral Stockdale to show youths that genuine American heros really existed.
But Americans are a short sighted, infantile lot that needs constant stimulation and entertainment. Read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death . He laments how elections have turned into entrainment to satisfy the optics of television. This was written in 1985. It has only gotten worse since them. Twitter initially had a 140 character limit because Americans are that fucking stupid that they cannot process any more information.
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman talks about the nature of the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. There were 7 three hour debates in front on non-college educated audiences. Both parties would elucidate complex arguments that required the audience to pay attention and keep track of the debaters points and subpoints. Debates today are just opportunities for sound bites to stimulate the low IQ American NPC.
Like Sir George Carlin said, “maybe it isn’t the politicians that suck, maybe it is the people that suck.”
“What we do have are masses of consumers, a tiny fraction of overachieving producers, and a bazaar of middlemen and agents and grifters swimming in chlorinated feces and calling it a pool party.”
Touche. Condensing 40 years of American culture in one sentence.
There is a school in CT that Stockman’s sons went to and they have a big mural on the wall about his life. One of the things he did when he was younger was study Stoicism and the teachings of Marcus Aurelius. He also studied the diary of a slave (cannot remember the name at the moment) from ancient Rome.
He said that it was these collected works that he drew on during his time in the Hanoi Hilton that allowed him to be in the proper mental mindset to survive.
As a pre-teen and young teen, I used to read the local newspaper daily. I wanted to learn what was happening in the world. I was kind of surprised that the paper was so easy to read until I later found out that most news was written such that it could be read and understood by anyone with an 8th grade education (back in the 70’s). I’d say what news we see today is barely above kindergarten level, if that much.
So, yeah, I agree that the debates are basically entertainment for that demographic and basically self-confirm whatever convictions someone had prior the debate – i.e. it ain’t changing anyone’s mind. I didn’t watch very much of it, but I could easily think of 10 better responses to any question than anything either candidate was saying. And really, for any complicated issue it will take much longer than the 2 minute debate format to present a cohesive answer.
Damn we are a depressing bunch…
“….how many Americans could have followed the conversation?”
Great punch line.
I think I saw former Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, signing a bomb that would be dropped in Gaza. Is this one of the policies we are talking about?
I am not trying to incite anything. Just pointing out when the severely mentally ill are put in charge- you get insane policy.
Americans robbed by taxation so we can bomb some place that nobody can find on a map.
I remember the one where Obama’s beard Pauly Ryan got spanked by Brandon.
This has a been a steaming fourth world turd since 2009 or Year Zero.
Free underwear and tacos for all, just stop by the White House for the hookup and ask a CPUSA (D) cargo cult czar, vote CPUSA (D) or it all goes away.
Get on that Grand Old Politburo (R) chamber of commerce golf course Paco, Jebbie needs a new rooftop today for free taco bowls of love.
Si se puede!
I refuse to hook my star to a criminal enterprise.
You can see things as they are and do what YOU need to do to live and survive.
Or, you can blow every which way in the wind, confused and aimless.
shrug
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. -H. L. Mencken
Biden hasn’t always been a moron but I think he probably qualifies due to his declining mental capability. Harris is the living embodiment of the Dunning Kruger curve. I think Mencken’s prediction has already come true or is about to.
Either way: put a fork in it, it’s done.
It cannot be overstated that the quality of the electorate at large has been the primary factor that has destroyed America. Universal franchise, the mass importation of the culturally and intellectually incompatible and incapable, the absolute ruination of education, modern media (if I could wave a magic wand right now, one of my first acts would be to strike the discovery and invention of television and the means of transmitting it’s signals far and wide from ever happening to begin with), and centralized corporate control ofn basically everything – in essence, capitalism run amok – have all culminated in the utter destruction of
society.
I used to wonder how the dark ages occured, with the attendant massive loss of knowledge covering so many disciplines. And yet today, I can see we are poised to repeat that cycle, thereby losing the knowledge (And competence) that enabled modern standards of comfort and allowed us to get so soft and complacent. That will eventually result in either our complete destruction as a species, or it will be the cause of our long suffering and eventually rebirth. The latter, of course, will take much longer than any of us here have left to live, probably at least a century to climb back up from the depths of our destruction.
That assumes the portion of humanity that has the capability to invent and build survives in adequate numbers to do it all over again. If only the savages make it through, then it will be nothing but the very worst characteristics of Africa and South America forevermore. And honestly, I’d rather die than live in a world like that. I already cannot stand the rank shittiness of modern society, and the obvious further degradation that is constantly taking place in real time. I cannot imagine being left to permanently toil under such circumstances just to eek out a subsistence lifestyle in a place that looks and feels no different from some sub saharan shithole. It is just too undignified to tolerate.
We have reached the end state, where President Mountain Dew Camacho will soon be trotted out.