Sunday, August 12, 2007

Why I'm not interested in politics

RU Sirius at 10 Zen Monkeys gives us a list of the Top 20 Taboo Topics for Presidential Candidates. All (well, most) of these are important issues which deserve attention and public debate, but they are completely marginalized and excluded from our attention. It's not that there's any sort of consensus on these issues either; they're all very contentious.
  1. Sexual Non-Conformism (Personal)
  2. Sex Positivism (Socio-Political)
  3. Open Borders
  4. "I Dig Pot and Shrooms"
  5. No Athiests, Agnostics, or Pagans
  6. U.S. Militarism
  7. Weird With a Beard
  8. Daddy, Where Does Money Come From?
  9. No Muslims!
  10. Stop The Drug War
  11. Bloated Military Budget
  12. Question Israel's Authority
  13. Vote for me — I'm smart!
  14. Let's Have More Democracy!
  15. The Nanny State
  16. "Think of the Children!"
  17. The Great Gun Debate? Irrelevant!
  18. Are Our Leaders Accountable?
  19. The Prison-Industrial Complex
  20. I Shouted Out Who Killed The Kennedys
Furthermore, the author doesn't list some other important topics, such as "the loss of civil liberties; the usurious policies of credit card companies; or the undemocratic methods used to prevent "third" political parties from challenging the duopoly."

RU Sirius assigns the blame for these topics being marginalized to the media.
Voters may agree with nearly everything a fringe candidate says, but when the media echo chamber dismisses that candidate as "fringe," they are drawing a big "L" for Loser across the candidate's face. And while voters will eventually develop some measure of contempt for the actual President, loser candidates are beneath contempt, and can't really be taken seriously.


When politics is so deeply delusional and irrational, it's very hard for me to become interested in any sort of activism or electoral politics. The best I can do is write about the 17 or 18 of the above items that I care and have something vaguely resembling a rational opinion about.
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1 comment:

  1. John Evo8/12/07, 10:57 PM

    The shoeless sage says: "Furthermore, the author doesn't list some other important topics, such as "the loss of civil liberties"

    But if it's any consolation, I just blogged on an aspect of this - Evaporating privacy.

    ReplyDelete

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