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Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride. We have only one more day of obnoxious and slanderous television and radio ads to suffer through before we're free, at least for two more years until the next electoral cycle begins. I'll be curious to see how many billions of dollars was wasted, er, ah, "spent" on the media thereby making them even more glutenous and overbearing. God forbid we should spend such exorbitant sums of money on something worthwhile, such as correcting the ills of our country. I am still of the opinion that for every dollar spent on political campaigning, another dollar should be donated to a worthy charity or cause, such as paying off the federal debt. That would take the wind out of the media's sails and actually accomplish something worthwhile to boot.
If the 2012 campaign did anything, it confirmed my belief the electoral process is horribly broken and in need of repair. I cannot think of a campaign in the last fifty years where the truth was so expertly butchered. Suddenly, "fact checkers" are a natural part of our vernacular. Remarkably, the fact checkers themselves need to be checked. The point is, nobody is credible anymore and we are suspicious of the truth regardless of how cold the facts may be. No wonder there are two distinctly different perspectives of the world. At the center of it all is the media, the true winners of the election whose best interests are served by keeping the public in the dark.
The elections on Tuesday will be the only reprieve we will have from the political madness. People will go to their precincts, vote for someone they really do not know, or for an amendment they do not understand. Some will vote based on name recognition alone, and some will vote as Oprah or Jon Stewart wanted them to. Very few will actually know what they are voting for. Yes, I still advocate the concept of voter certification.
We will go to bed proud of fulfilling our civic duty, only to wake up to a nightmare on Wednesday morning. No matter how the presidential election turns out, one half of the country will be unhappy which may very well lead to civil unrest. I remember going to bed on election night in 1976 thinking Gerald Ford had it in the bag, only to wake up to the nightmare of that peanut farmer.
So, enjoy your day off before the festivities begin; catch up on some "ZZZ," maybe take in a movie, have a few drinks, hide your money, stock up on ammo, whatever. After this timely respite, the country is going to be a lot different, one way or another, and a lot of people are not going to like it.
Oh yea, one other thing: If you don't vote, don't bitch. You had your chance.
Keep the Faith!
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Copyright © 2012 by Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.
David Conkle
8:11 am on Tuesday, November 6, 2012
I agree that our election system is "horribly broken and in need of repair" also. Until we have meaningful campaign finance reform, both sides are held accountable for the telling of lies, a party can't for political gain suppress the vote and all citizens take their most important civic duty seriously, then this situation will not change for the better and it will only get worse. I would gladly pay an additional fee or tax to even the playing field by supporting public financing for campaigns. Until we take the incredible amount of monies spent on these political dog and ponies shows out of the picture though, those with the most money will continue to have the loudest voices. This election is setting all kinds of new records and more than one billion dollas have been spent on media ad buys alone. I would like to see us model the British system where politicians are only allowed to campaign for six weeks and then the people decide. Unfortunately, until the American, "sheeple" stand up and say enough is enough, I'm afraid we are all in for more of the same fecaloid derivitives.
Tim Bryce
8:56 am on Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Thank you David for your comments. To me, the force driving the madness is the media with its huge appetite for money. This election had revealed how horribly irresponsible the media is. Nobody trusts them anymore and the public is left in the dark.
David Conkle
12:07 pm on Tuesday, November 6, 2012
True that, to a certain extent. Today's media is much like prospecting for gold, you have to shift through tons of dirt to find those few nuggets of truth. Unfortunately, who has the time to do that besides those on a quest to find truth and the freedom found? Or those like me who are so anal-retentive that nothing less than complete accuracy will do! :-) I truly wish we had some modern day Walter Cronkites, Edward R Murrows or even great American humorist Will Rodgers to tell us like it really is. Today we have, to quote a line from Shakespeare's MacBeth, famous soliloquy of act.5, scene 5., news today is "Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." At least we still have great modern day satirest, John Stewart's Daily Show to laugh at through the mist's of our tears. Keep your faith brother, I've already got my own!
Torrey Craig
9:33 am on Thursday, November 8, 2012
Tim - David ,,, I feel that you have purposefully dodged responsibility. The media is not at fault. The media is a mirror of society. To cry out that you do not like what you see in mirror and to fault the mirror is what? Tim if a client walks in your office and gives you an outlandish sum of money for a trivial project, would you take the money and run? If you really want to force a stop to this situation stop giving your money to candidates. Gentlemen, you have the power to stop it the question is will you use the power you have?
David Conkle
10:43 am on Saturday, November 10, 2012
Torrey, I'm unclear about your first sentence, what are Tim and I dodging responsibility for here? Much of the media is now owned by large corporations and as far as being a mirror of society, a mirror does not lie --- have you watched Faux News lately? True, I have donated small sums of money in the past, however this year I did not contribute one thin dime. I firmly believe we need to have public financing for campaigns where viable canidates only get public monies to run their campaigns and I would be willing to pay an additional fee or tax to help in financing this system. What we have now is the wealthy and special interests drowning out the voices of the people and leaving our legislators beholden to them and not us.
Robert "Bobby" Saltzman
11:34 am on Saturday, November 10, 2012
"If the 2012 campaign did anything, it confirmed my belief the electoral process is horribly broken"
Le me say it one more time so I sound like a broken record...they have 364 days to get one day right how come they can't??
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/gov-rick-scott-defends-florida-election-as-his-chief-says-we-could-have/1260762