Can voters think for themselves anymore?

[arendt]

We all know that Republicans don't think, they believe. Once they have latched onto some candidate, whom they picked by a gut feeling, they will no sooner let go than a pit bull. Faith has trumped reason with those people. They openly state that "thinking is a snare of the devil".

But, the Democrats have claimed they want people to think. Of course, this claim is disproved by the pointless exercise in horse-race political coverage and gotcha game-playing, known as The Permanent Campaign (TPC). This week, the media establishment has just lowered the bar for campaigning so low, a paraplegic could drag himself over it.

From this point forward, politicians won't have to pretend to appeal to voters on irrelevant "issues" like haircuts or kindergarten statements. (Anything to avoid mentioning the Iraq occupation, the crashing economy, the failing environment, the criminality of the Bush administration, etc.) Now, Democratic politics is just about celebrity.

This corruption of the political process was inevitable from the moment the Dems acquiesced to the Survivor-style "vote-em-off-the-island" format for the TV debates. By mediating the entire campaign through TV, the Dems have eliminated what little was left of the correct relationship between voters and candidates (that is, the idea that the voters were to be deferred to by the candidates). Now, it is the other way around: the candidates are celebrities who hob-nob with other celebrities, the voters are couch potatoes swooning for an autograph, and politics is just another bad reality TV show.

And, the voters have swallowed this poison. They turned out in droves for Oprah, not for the candidate. They swoon over celebrities and form cults of personality around their celebrity candidate (not just Obama, but all the "first tier"), instead of demanding answers about why the middle class is being robbed blind, why their children continue to die in senseless and counter-productive wars, why immigration cannot be dealt with by some sane compromise, why the environment is being trashed. You see, the latter behaviors would be signs of real democracy, and TPC can't have that. The corporations are smiling broadly this week; their voters have been housebroken. That FCC consolidation is a sure thing.

Does this mean that we will be subjected to every celebrity in Hollywood being rolled out to tart up the meaningless soundbites that pass for politics in America today?

Frankly, yes. The powers that be have succeeded in reducing politics to just a sub-section of "Entertainment Tonight" or, more appropriately, "The Showbiz Show with David Spade". Henceforth, politicians will openly be bought and sold like commercial airtime. Candidacies, like series with bad ratings, will be cancelled at anytime by unhappy sponsors. And the average American will see nothing unusual about this.

You can stick a fork in democracy in America. It is done.

[Selatius]

1. They can. They simply need facts. The news media is big on puff pieces, not facts.

You can't have a democracy endure with an ignorant population. It always ends up degenerating into a dictatorship or an oligarchy.

[DFW]

5. We need more politicians with the guts to cut the MSM off at their knees, and publicly

I loved it when Sarkozy stopped that CBS woman in the middle of her TV interview,
when he wanted to discuss issues of substance and she just wanted to talk about
his divorce. Edwards has made some similar gestures, too. They will get away with
the fluff only as long as the people they interview let them get away with it. We
need more interviews like the one where Bill Clinton shoved Chris Wallace's talking
head right back up the asshole it had emerged from. Republicans thrive off of stuff
like that, but the public notices when they offer crap, and are stopped cold in their
tracks.

Clinton told Wallace to his face what an asshole he was. Sarkozy took off his earpiece,
shook Stahl's hand and walked right off the set. Either one is fine with me as long as
the message gets delivered: "you will not pull that crap with me. Act like a journalist,
or go jerk off, 'cause I'm outta here."

[arendt]

8. But, it is a fact that celebrity-hood is pushing politics aside. The masses fawn and yawn. n/t

[LSparkle]

2. We've become "Network"

God bless Paddy Chayefsky (sp?) ... He had a crystal ball.

[tom_paine]

11. Oh, we were Network 25 years ago. We are something much much worse.

Chayefsky (I think you spelled it correctly) would have had to drop acid to get deep enoughinto the nightmare-mind to come up with this upside-down Orwellian Wet Dream.

I don't mean to diss you, because Network was so very prophetic, you're right, but it has been superseded by such huge distances of depravity and infoganda, that Network is tame and anachoristic by comparison.

How does the pissant footage of "The Mao Tse Tung" hour even compare with five minutes of bullshit like Real Life Videos, or whatever that murder-fest is called?

Diana is a civil, polite, and engaged person next to the people who have designed advertising that beams right into your head. Yes, you heard me correctly. here's an artcile in which these monsters show how proud they are of this new technology.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=122491

How could Diana compare to THAT?

There's more, so much mroe but I think you get the idea.

Only us middle-aged folks and older can get anything out of Network.

Any young person who never knew Old America (1776-2000, RIP) would look at Network and say, "Wow, this is so tame and lame. I think I'll watch 'America's Most Grisly Murders"."

[Kutjara]

3. Humans don't think for themselves.

We're herd animals. Our "rational" minds only function about 5% of the time. The rest of it, we're on autopilot, what psychologists charitably call "heuristic" mode. We shuffle around, minds in neutral, repeating patterns of behavior that get us through the day with minimal hassle. Our responses are come from reflex, not reflection.

"Psychic" cold readers, social engineers, and con artists use this fact to ply their trades.

We are a species of sleepwalkers.

[arendt]

9. Well, its not as quantifiable as 5 +/- 2; but I take your meaning. Still...

to get through life, as opposed to just the day, people need to learn when it is time to wake up their rational minds, because they are going to get hurt if they don't.

The problem is that media is putting out a 24/7 "go to sleep"; nothing to see here"; "hey look at that hot babe" gusher of crapola. The centralized broadcast and corporatized media has been the prime factor in the decline of democracy.

If we are asleep while the house is burning down, its because the corporations have drugged us.

arendt

[journalist3072]

4. I've been asking myself the same thing, and I raised this very issue here on DU over the weekend

Do people really be need to told by some celebrity who to vote for?

[NMMNG]

7. It seems some do

Audacity of Hype

[journalist3072]

13. Well that's a very sad commentary about the American people.

I have very little use for this kind of "group think." It almost seems a little too Jim Jones-like for my taste.

Whatever happened to educating yourself on the issues, and where the candidates stand on those issues- and making your own decision?

[NMMNG]

14. It's easier and faster to let others do it for you

:-(

[Kurovski]

6. K&R. (nt)

[and-justice-for-all]

10. They do whatever the MSM tells them too...nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. The last thing that politicians want is voters who think for themselves.

Party politics is built on the concept of conformity not individuality. In politics, "following the party line" is considered a virtue.

“Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only, no matter how big its membership may be is, no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently."

Rosa Luxemburg

[lostnfound]

15. If you want them to think for themselves, we should stop training them to think for someone else.

Not to beat a drum, but I am quite absorbed at the moment in the perspective that schools are training grounds in how NOT to be independent-minded. Whatever the content of the curriculum, the basic premise of school is that it's normal to get your direction all day long, day after day, year after year from the designated representative of 'the system'.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2438165&mesg_id=2438165

In adulthood, that direction is supplied by your corporate owner and your television. It's the perfect school-to-sheep program.

Education in America in the 1800s was about reinforcing self-reliance and independent productivity. If you wanted an independent livelihood it was helpful to know how to read, write, and add; and perhaps to be inculcated with proverbs saying that the early bird gets the worm or if you don't succeed try again.

Education in America in the 1900s by design reinforces extended dependence and being a cog-in-a-system.

What you refer to as being 'housebroken' starts in school. Suppression of popular democracy is one of the hidden goals of school design. The schoolteachers themselves have been disempowered.

[Solly Mack]

16. K&R Thank you

We're calling it the 'American Dreamz' campaign in my house.

but it's not just the campaign...it's everything.

It's all glitter.