Y'know it occurs to me lately that political debates by one-sided media organizations with agendas are not worthwile ways of metering who will be a good leader. In fact, it is a terrible concept. Last night, I watched a large segment of the Republican debate for the nomination for the party candidate on Fox News, co-sponsored by Google. All of that in itself is a mouthful and I'm still sorting out the intracracies of the conflagration of associations there, but regardless. The primary purpose of discussion is the format of a political debate where these unknowns are asked a series of questions that journalists, pundits, Mr. Joe America, or the candidates themselves have somehow triggered by their revelations in our interconnected world. It's a terrible format, foremost for the undecided masses and then for the candidates themselves.
The undecided masses, and they are huge. That's the whole purpose of the debate, to elucidate, clarify, and all together draw all of those who don't have a clue who is the best choice to lead the free world into the next four year period via a system of arbitrary questions that attack talking points designed by media gatekeepers.
It's a terrible system because there is no constraint for the potential President to actually 'answer' a question posed to them. Instead, through a subset of doublespeak that routes any definitive answer off on a patriotic tangent answers to questions all assume an amorphous grey cast, and none of the clarity of who is a worthwile candidate is actually given.
Perhaps it is a good idea that there are a series of debates in this format. However, why are high-schoolers held to a standard of rules, time limits, and scoring when they are forced to debate. Shouldn't our potential leaders be held to those same microscopic standards of efficacy? Instead we give these unknowns the liberties of money, ease of explanation, and luxury of obfuscation to curry the favor of our mass of indecision.
We stand on a precipice where the inactions of the individual have lead us to a crux of consciousness. The rights of man over his own body are at issue in this United States of America. It is under attack from the corporations which we turn to for convenience, healing, transportation, nutrition, and many of our other body needs. Our medicines come with the price of side effect, our food with the cost of chemistry, and our choices governed by constraints consigned by detached bureaucrats. We have fallen far from our once great ideals of equality, of brotherhood, and righteousness. As a nation, we have allowed this fall and welcomed it in a haze of gadgetry, ease, and dilution of perception by our chosen masters of programming and propaganda. We have turned to a complacent mass of bibulous gelatin, instead of the fire-hardened sword that our forbears paid for with all of their sweat and blood.
If we are not conscious of the trials of the past, and the diminishing boundaries of our liberties in the present, we are doomed to a dour and diminished future where our bodies are not our own, our minds are the properties of corporations, and our spirits are the dictates of dogma designed to direct our daily lives to a digital subjugation of will.
Put down your iPod, your iPad, Kindle, Android, and PC; Turn off the television, tear out the cable, the phone, and the Yahoo. The world of our fathers is floundering amidst this haze of convenience with costs unseen, the lives of our children being mortgaged for percents and derivative goals of detached bankers. Where has the wisdom of our age gone?
The undecided masses, and they are huge. That's the whole purpose of the debate, to elucidate, clarify, and all together draw all of those who don't have a clue who is the best choice to lead the free world into the next four year period via a system of arbitrary questions that attack talking points designed by media gatekeepers.
It's a terrible system because there is no constraint for the potential President to actually 'answer' a question posed to them. Instead, through a subset of doublespeak that routes any definitive answer off on a patriotic tangent answers to questions all assume an amorphous grey cast, and none of the clarity of who is a worthwile candidate is actually given.
Perhaps it is a good idea that there are a series of debates in this format. However, why are high-schoolers held to a standard of rules, time limits, and scoring when they are forced to debate. Shouldn't our potential leaders be held to those same microscopic standards of efficacy? Instead we give these unknowns the liberties of money, ease of explanation, and luxury of obfuscation to curry the favor of our mass of indecision.
We stand on a precipice where the inactions of the individual have lead us to a crux of consciousness. The rights of man over his own body are at issue in this United States of America. It is under attack from the corporations which we turn to for convenience, healing, transportation, nutrition, and many of our other body needs. Our medicines come with the price of side effect, our food with the cost of chemistry, and our choices governed by constraints consigned by detached bureaucrats. We have fallen far from our once great ideals of equality, of brotherhood, and righteousness. As a nation, we have allowed this fall and welcomed it in a haze of gadgetry, ease, and dilution of perception by our chosen masters of programming and propaganda. We have turned to a complacent mass of bibulous gelatin, instead of the fire-hardened sword that our forbears paid for with all of their sweat and blood.
If we are not conscious of the trials of the past, and the diminishing boundaries of our liberties in the present, we are doomed to a dour and diminished future where our bodies are not our own, our minds are the properties of corporations, and our spirits are the dictates of dogma designed to direct our daily lives to a digital subjugation of will.
Put down your iPod, your iPad, Kindle, Android, and PC; Turn off the television, tear out the cable, the phone, and the Yahoo. The world of our fathers is floundering amidst this haze of convenience with costs unseen, the lives of our children being mortgaged for percents and derivative goals of detached bankers. Where has the wisdom of our age gone?
