This post comes from The BuzzFlash Blog courtesey of Ann Davidow 8-13-2010
An increasingly disquieting feature of today’s political discourse is that bits and pieces of misinformation are regurgitated endlessly, indulging the feeding frenzy that fills the airwaves and print media. Constant polling and partisan talking points are the order of the day whether or not they contribute to rational debate.
It’s only human nature to gravitate towards perceived winners, a tendency too often persuaded by the quick takes of glib correspondents who are not only poorly informed but who celebrate their ignorance, as the members of the Fox team do, by pointing to their ratings. That ratings are somehow meant to convey relevance is an all the more discouraging indication of how poorly voters are served by people who speak with authority but lack the background, intellect or education to make the kinds of critical assessments they so loudly broadcast. No doubt Dancing with the Stars gets good ratings too, but participants aren’t usually interviewed about their political inclinations.
From deep in a national psyche battered by the right-wing ridicule machine come the most absurd and insulting broadsides against the president. In one instance the suggestion was made that electing someone whose experience consisted of handing out pamphlets on street corners was a choice that has brought the country down – - a reference to Obama’s work as a community organizer that ignores his other substantial credentials. Did such a person actually vote for George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin?
For it would be difficult indeed to find anyone less qualified to be president than Bush or more deeply enmeshed in energy-industry power brokers than Cheney. And what business exactly did McCain operate unless he opined about his wife’s extensive beer company holdings? As for Palin her service as mayor of a smallish city and her half term as Alaska’s governor aren’t what most people would call extensive business experience.
In fact W’s business ventures didn’t do well despite help from his father’s friends. As for his political credentials he served as governor in Texas, a state where the legislature only meets every other year and where his circle of supporters included Enron’s disgraced CEO, Ken Lay or as Bush labeled him, “Kenny Boy.”
So how do such insubstantial people rise to the level of serious consideration for the highest offices in the land if not for vast infusions of cash and willful misrepresentations that ignored their limited proficiency and nefarious relationships? A national economic meltdown that began before he was elected and bailouts that were structured in the previous administration are attributed in the heat of election-year politics to President Obama. And it is his wars and his debt though clearly the Bush tax cuts while we were at war, underwritten by borrowed funds that started a spiraling deficit impossible to restrain once the country fell into recession.
And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are targeted Democratic malfunctions Republicans always make them the villains in the country’s financial collapse. They are far less likely to focus on malfeasance in the banking industry and Wall Street for their derivative machinations and deceptive mortgage-writing practices and far more likely to obstruct administration efforts to regulate those giants. In the face of all that has occurred, conservatives continue to insist that government should get out of the way and let unregulated markets prevail, a position that even former Fed Chairman, Greenspan now considers bad policy.
No matter what the issue, Republicans find a way to make it serve their purposes, stonewalling White House initiatives and framing their opposition in terms of liberty and constitutional rectitude whether or not that frame of reference has any factual basis. General Odierno says there has been progress in Iraq though some groups ‘want to halt the way forward’ and do it with car bombs. Here at home Congressional Republicans obstruct the way forward with filibusters and call it patriotism.
In a moment of introspection regarding the super-inflammatory issue of immigration and ‘the law’, someone observed it was a good thing there were no laws when the first settlers arrived or the indigenous population would have had them deported. But in the midst of a partisan sinkhole created by people who have less interest in making things work than in propagandizing every situation and staking out their personal political turf there seems to be precious little time for deep thought about our most important national concerns.
An increasingly disquieting feature of today’s political discourse is that bits and pieces of misinformation are regurgitated endlessly, indulging the feeding frenzy that fills the airwaves and print media. Constant polling and partisan talking points are the order of the day whether or not they contribute to rational debate.
It’s only human nature to gravitate towards perceived winners, a tendency too often persuaded by the quick takes of glib correspondents who are not only poorly informed but who celebrate their ignorance, as the members of the Fox team do, by pointing to their ratings. That ratings are somehow meant to convey relevance is an all the more discouraging indication of how poorly voters are served by people who speak with authority but lack the background, intellect or education to make the kinds of critical assessments they so loudly broadcast. No doubt Dancing with the Stars gets good ratings too, but participants aren’t usually interviewed about their political inclinations.
From deep in a national psyche battered by the right-wing ridicule machine come the most absurd and insulting broadsides against the president. In one instance the suggestion was made that electing someone whose experience consisted of handing out pamphlets on street corners was a choice that has brought the country down – - a reference to Obama’s work as a community organizer that ignores his other substantial credentials. Did such a person actually vote for George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin?For it would be difficult indeed to find anyone less qualified to be president than Bush or more deeply enmeshed in energy-industry power brokers than Cheney. And what business exactly did McCain operate unless he opined about his wife’s extensive beer company holdings? As for Palin her service as mayor of a smallish city and her half term as Alaska’s governor aren’t what most people would call extensive business experience.
In fact W’s business ventures didn’t do well despite help from his father’s friends. As for his political credentials he served as governor in Texas, a state where the legislature only meets every other year and where his circle of supporters included Enron’s disgraced CEO, Ken Lay or as Bush labeled him, “Kenny Boy.”
So how do such insubstantial people rise to the level of serious consideration for the highest offices in the land if not for vast infusions of cash and willful misrepresentations that ignored their limited proficiency and nefarious relationships? A national economic meltdown that began before he was elected and bailouts that were structured in the previous administration are attributed in the heat of election-year politics to President Obama. And it is his wars and his debt though clearly the Bush tax cuts while we were at war, underwritten by borrowed funds that started a spiraling deficit impossible to restrain once the country fell into recession.
And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are targeted Democratic malfunctions Republicans always make them the villains in the country’s financial collapse. They are far less likely to focus on malfeasance in the banking industry and Wall Street for their derivative machinations and deceptive mortgage-writing practices and far more likely to obstruct administration efforts to regulate those giants. In the face of all that has occurred, conservatives continue to insist that government should get out of the way and let unregulated markets prevail, a position that even former Fed Chairman, Greenspan now considers bad policy.
No matter what the issue, Republicans find a way to make it serve their purposes, stonewalling White House initiatives and framing their opposition in terms of liberty and constitutional rectitude whether or not that frame of reference has any factual basis. General Odierno says there has been progress in Iraq though some groups ‘want to halt the way forward’ and do it with car bombs. Here at home Congressional Republicans obstruct the way forward with filibusters and call it patriotism.
In a moment of introspection regarding the super-inflammatory issue of immigration and ‘the law’, someone observed it was a good thing there were no laws when the first settlers arrived or the indigenous population would have had them deported. But in the midst of a partisan sinkhole created by people who have less interest in making things work than in propagandizing every situation and staking out their personal political turf there seems to be precious little time for deep thought about our most important national concerns.
