mean things about the other candidate

This presidential election campaign is one of the strangest things I've ever seen.


Since the early 1990s, with the proliferation of cable TV channels and other communication venues, the quality of public discourse has suffered, and flattened, to the point where many campaigns seem to consist of --


"MEAN THINGS ABOUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE!"


"MEAN THINGS ABOUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE!"


"MEAN THINGS ABOUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE!"
"MEAN THINGS ABOUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE!"




Earlier in this campaign season, when some of my associates quoted what people were saying about the election, it was all stuff about "the other" candidate.


If the person speaking supported Clinton, they were saying, "Trump this, Trump that."


And if the person speaking supported Trump, they were saying, "Clinton this, Clinton that."


I suggested moderating the next barrage by interjecting, "Yes, and tell me now about the candidate you're voting for.  Talk to me about the candidate you support.  You are voting for Trump -- OK, tell me about Trump.  You say you support Clinton -- well then, talk to us about Clinton."




Could people meet this challenge?  TV talking-yaddas can't meet the challenge...  But the thing we have to remember with them is, they aren't being paid for thoughtful analysis, they're being paid to entertain.  ("Are you not ENTERTAINED???!!!")


About 8 years ago I read somewhere, someone stated (I think in The New Yorker) "Everything on television, now, is a lie."


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"MEAN THINGS ABOUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE!"
"MEAN THINGS ABOUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE!"
"MEAN THINGS ABOUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE!"




When you think about it, Candidate Trump's performance this year has made a mockery of this tradition of campaigning.  He has "run it out" to its ultimate electric-blender mash-up of wild silliness...


A mockery.


And, when you think about it some more, you realize, it is a Tradition-Of-Campaigning that deserves to have a Mockery made of it....




Will Bob Dylan write a song about the 2016 presidential campaign?  (Time for some rhyme-and-reason...)


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Topics I wanted to write about, but kept getting interrupted by other Topics, sweeping in...:


Camelot;


Sugar and the Free Market;


Quality of Congress




"Camelot."  Recently, writing about the source of this word for Pres. Kennedy's time in office -- "for one brief shining moment, there was Camelot -- and it will never be that way again" --


By giving the interview to journalist / historian Theodore White, was Jacqueline Kennedy asking for her husband to be remembered in a positive light,


or accomplishing one of the sleekest public relations "coups" in modern history?









Answer:  yes.




She wanted to offer -- in artistic language which appealed to the imagination -- a way for people to remember President Kennedy and his work;


the resounding success of her effort frustrated to no end the "bitter old men" (as she had sometimes thought of them) who write history, and rankled political opponents who were just waiting to swoop in (once the grief and shock would die down) and eviscerate the president's achievements.






Sugar and the free market.  Corporate-entertainment-media says, "free markets!  Free markets! We really really love free markets with no gov'ment regulations!" but in reality, do they operate in free markets, or do they get Special Government Deals, a.k.a. "Hand-Outs"?  Reading about sugar industry back in mid-September, it appears they get --


~~  a protected market


~~  price supports, and


~~  pollution privileges.





Is that an "un-free" market, not one, not two, but three different ways?






Quality of Congress.  A concept I read about said, in the 1800s and early 1900s, political organizations ("machines") in both parties ran things -- selected candidates... (Tammany Hall; Mayor Daley, etc.)  Then as time went on, the machines ran their course -- having earned critics and made enemies -- and they lost their power.


Getting rid of the machines (smoke-filled room, etc.)







was supposed to make the process more "open" and thus "better" but an unintended consequence is -- when you no longer have candidates being selected by people who can spot talent and nurture it, then instead what we get are candidates who simply "nominate themselves" -- volunteer themselves.  The case has been made, that it's a different type of person.




(Could this explain the seeming lack of nuanced -- and even, sometimes, of coherent -- thinking on the part of some U.S. senators and congressmen?  Could it explain why a higher percentage of people in Congress seem better fitted to reality-show antics than to serious understanding of the great issues of the day?)


(Higher ego-level; lower intelligence-level?)


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