Today’s jewel of a quote comes to us from James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936):
Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster”
The Human Comedy
Isn’t this so true… when we have ‘twitter wars’ (what us old timers might refer to as ‘flaming’ that are nothing more than ad hominem attacks showing our most base aspects. “Fascist!” “Libtard!” “Racist!” “Commie!” And these are just the insults that can be repeated in semi-polite society. From a presidential candidate who gets hidden in their basement because his handlers know he can’t stitch two coherent sentences together in front of a crowd to the “orange golem of greatness [just ask him, he’ll tell you…. over, and over, and over]” kicking off yet another boorish late night tweet storm over some imagined slight or another, it all seems to be just another distraction. Inflation? What inflation???? Never mind that $9 “value meal” price tag where the beef has shrunk by 30%….that’s not inflation! Doesn’t everyone drive a $40,000 car…why that’s entry level!
One side seems incapable of actually understanding, or even wanting to understand, how someone might deviate from their line of thinking… it’s exhausting even to watch, so lately, I don’t. I go on Farcebook merely to post these missives. Twitter? What’s that? There are news channels on my firestick??? Who knew!??!! But, to bring it back to Mr. Robinson’s quote, all of these things are just meant to distract the masses from what the plutocrats are pulling right underneath our noses. Nobody is playing 4-D chess [sorry orange golem of greatness], the swamp never gets drained…and it doesn’t matter what ideology you believe in. It seems to me that if Nietzsche was right and the Christian god is dead, then a new secular religion, with all of its attendant dogmas, has taken its place: a political theater of the absurd.
I will leave this post with something for you to ponder: has any politician, whatever your beliefs or where you lie on the political spectrum, ever done anything for YOU directly? Or, put more broadly, what has any politician ever really accomplished other than to get elected in what is essentially a beauty contest writ large? Inquiring minds want to know!