Don't we have better things to talk about?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I hear a lot people talk about "being political". Yet all they seem to talk about is:

Did you hear what Rush Limbaugh said?
Did you hear what Ann Coulter said?
Did you hear what happened at the Tea Party Convention?
Did you know that this one guy was mean to another guy?
Have you seen the latest thing on the Fox News?
OMG Jon Stewart totally pwned some guy!

Wait, what happened to the politics? It is strange that as a country we devote a considerable amount of our time and energy into arguing about who we/each other are. But what does that have to do with politics? Have we become so atrophied by identity-issues that we are confusing one for the other? What is the most important thing here? Whether or not side X are really like the Nazis? Whether or not we are the best side?

I don't get it. Can someone help me out here?

Comments

[tridus.livejournal.com]

Understanding issues is hard. It's hard at the best of times, and really hard when dealing with a public that has an attention span measured in seconds.

So, when your goal is to win, are you going to try to explain how a policy will accomplish some goal? Or are you going to say "<random talking head who opposes me > is a worthless <liberal/facist/commie/airhead>!"


Something that has really stuck with me over the years is people here in Canada who wanted more health spending. They said they "wanted more health spending, even if it meant running a deficit" in huge numbers. When asked, most of them had no idea what "deficit" means.

They don't know what it is, but by gollie they sure do want more of it! When you're a political operative working in that kind of climate, your options for anything resembling intelligent discussion are limited.

(A similar case was on a poll I got called for. The government had put out a report titled "the road to self sufficiency." The pollster asked what I knew about it, and I said that I'd heard of it but hadn't read it, which was one of their options. The next question was "do you agree with the report's recommendations?"

Now, you'd think that me just saying that I hadn't read the report would make the answer pretty obvious. You'd be wrong. Not only was it not obvious, the answer "I have no idea because I haven't read the report" wasn't even an option. Unsurprisingly when the results came out, people were overwhelmingly in favor of the report. People also overwhelmingly knew absolutely nothing about what the report actually said. But it's hard to be against it when the title is about self sufficiency, right?)