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Campaign Zoo: Stop Feeding the Animals

by John on 05/14/2012

The silly season is at its peak.  The time before the political conventions (Oh crap we have until summer) is loaded with each side trying to portray the other for the election.

This goofiness is seen in all campaign ads, most weapons of mass destruction emails, and on the two cable news (entertainment) outlets that have a team in the game.

Look at yourselves first. 

If you’re angry and you respond to these tactics – then you apparently have “something” in the game.  It could be your love of one or hatred of another candidate or political party.  It might be your job or your faith.

Fine.  However, if you’re Informed Not Inflamed, you will just shrug.  You can’t take any of this seriously.

Do we really know if Mitt Romney was an anti-gay bully as a teen?  No more than we think that the President is a Socialist-Muslim born in another countryHow many out there have railed against both of these campaign tactics?  Sadly, the majority of us only choose one.  And yet you also probably rail about media bias the loudest.

This is a zoo, folks.  Please stop feeding the animals.  That is, unless you like inciting crazy.

Unfortunately, this is part of the horrible weather in this silly season.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I am reading Robert Caro’s latest book on LBJ.  Great read.

But LBJ was a behavioral whack-a-do.  He had an ego bigger than Texas.  He would sulk if he didn’t get his way; when he got his way, he became a bully again.  LBJ actually kicked Hubert Humphrey on the floor of the Senate because he didn’t move fast on what LBJ wanted him to do.

Yet, this man from the South who ushered in piecemeal Civil Rights legislation as Senate Leader in the 1950s eventually presided over the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 once he became president.

In every candidate there is the potential for greatness and evil.  Certainly the greatness comes from within.  But more importantly, it also has a lot to do with the will of the people.  Johnson, according to Caro, had empathy for black America.  He was poor and an outcast of his hometown, always told he wouldn’t amount to anything.  Yet, he catered to the Southern, white politicians who resisted — violently in many cases — the freedom and rights for African Americans.  Still, LBJ championed this.  Why?  Americans, as a majority, said it was time.

It’s time for us to start getting smart and informed.  Our views will have to be known.  Unfortunately, the views that are being advertised are out-of-touch and unrelated to what is happening in the US and what we need to do in the years and decades ahead.

So, how do you know who to vote for?  Take your time.  Read all you can by serious non judgmental writers.  Then watch, yes even on TV, the performance of the candidates.  Finally, sit and say nothing for the next few months.  Then combine your knowledge with your “gut” and you may have an answer you can live with.

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