Why is it that the radical voices on either side of the political spectrum are granted such an inequitable amount of face time in the media?\u00a0 The answer is the same today as it has been since the start of the mass media phenomenon \u2013 bad news sells.\u00a0 In itself that is an indictment of the nature of humanity \u2013 we cannot blame the media for giving consumers what they demand.<\/p>\n
However, in the political arena this is an intolerable situation since it alienates voters.\u00a0 When voters are given a choice of two terrible candidates, many of them will choose to remain silent.\u00a0 After all, if your choice is a rock or a hard place you have nothing to gain by choosing either.\u00a0 Sadly, that is precisely what has just happened in Egypt \u2013 the majority of voters decided that the choice was simply unbearable and made no choice.\u00a0 Unfortunately, when voters choose this path the winners are invariably the radical fringe.<\/p>\n
Why does this matter to sensible people in more civilized countries?\u00a0 (Forgive me for the implication that Egypt is not a civilized country \u2013 though that is not my intent, I fear that beneath a radical religious government it will soon devolve into that.)\u00a0 The implication is catastrophic for sensible people everywhere.\u00a0 None of us are exempt simply by the good fortune of where we happen to live.\u00a0 Since the USA in in a presidential election year, let\u2019s look at it as an illustration.<\/p>\n
I have lived in the USA for twenty years, and every election I have been appalled by the blatant and transparent manipulation of the voting public by the two political parties, which invariably use emotive issues to divide the electorate.\u00a0 Every election has seen the hysterical voices of the Democrat and Republican parties gain volume.\u00a0 Every election has seen those two parties move further and further apart, ideologically.<\/p>\n
Nonsense.<\/p>\n
My perception of the truth is far from that sad picture.\u00a0 The majority of the people I know are very similar to how they were twenty years ago.\u00a0 If their viewpoints were extreme way back then, they are still extreme.\u00a0 If they were mellow, they still are.<\/p>\n
So, if the people haven\u2019t fundamentally changed, then where does the perception of two radically opposed political extremes originate?\u00a0 Listening to the media, one might be fooled into believing there is a vast divide between these two extremes – a void utterly empty of people.<\/p>\n
One might be fooled, if one is a fool.<\/p>\n
The mass media holds substantial blame for giving disproportionate coverage to the radical extremes present in both political parties.\u00a0 They are not simply giving the electorate what they desire \u2013 they are actively stirring up trouble and thereby amplifying the voices of the vocal minority.\u00a0 What happened to fair, impartial, and equivalent coverage?\u00a0 Somehow it has been washed away, the mass media has quite literally sold out \u2013 ask yourself who is funding the extremist political advertising bombarding us from all sources?\u00a0 I rather doubt it comes from people just like you, or I \u2013 in fact I\u2019m pretty sure it doesn\u2019t, and this begets the question \u2013 who then?<\/p>\n
I am an independent.\u00a0 My intention is always to vote with my conscience – frankly I can\u2019t understand how anyone can be foolish enough to vote along party lines.\u00a0 Do such people truly believe their political affiliation overrides their moral obligation to do what is right?\u00a0 As an example of this, let me quote this borderline hysterical comment from a woman who I quite like, and who is normally levelheaded, \u201cI vote Republican and no new taxes!\u201d<\/p>\n
Really?\u00a0 That is as far as your obligation goes?\u00a0 So what about the fact that police and sheriff departments are being forced to retrench officers of the law because they simply don\u2019t have adequate funding to pay their existing staff?\u00a0 You\u2019re going to vote no to the tax line item that funds their departments?\u00a0 How about schools?\u00a0 How about road maintenance?\u00a0 How about funding the military?\u00a0 What about higher education?\u00a0 And the list goes on.\u00a0 Taxes pay for these things.\u00a0 Taxes should expire, and taxes should be renewed \u2013 if you expect to have access to the services they provide.<\/p>\n
As to the rhetoric of privatize, privatize.\u00a0 Sorry, but there are some things that the private sector simply has no business in \u2013 things that are prerequisites to civilization as we know it, things that usually have a cost but no direct benefit.\u00a0 For example:- the military, the police, the judiciary, education, road construction and maintenance, the jail system (what morally bankrupt people allowed the fiasco of Corrections Corporation of America to come into existence?), along with various others.<\/p>\n
To that list of the obvious, I would also add the medical system, since I don\u2019t believe medical treatment should only be available to the wealthy.\u00a0 I am also inclined to add communications infrastructure, as inability to access information denies fair competition.\u00a0 However, those are my personal beliefs only and without majority consensus they do not deserve consideration.\u00a0 (I don\u2019t mean a majority of the vocal minority)<\/p>\n
So, after that long and circuitous route, we come back to the root of this issue.\u00a0 A rock, a hard place, and a silent void.<\/strong><\/p>\n The two major political parties are doing the electorate a huge disservice by limiting our choices to candidates that hold little in common with the \u201cvoid of the silent majority\u201d.<\/p>\n If Obama is the hard place, then Mitt Romney is the rock.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want either of them as president \u2013 and I blame the major political parties for giving me a choice so poor that I feel voting is pointless.<\/p>\n It is long past time for change \u2013 both political parties need to wake up and give us worthwhile candidates who might possibly have an interest in how the people in the void between their radical extremes feel.\u00a0 Alternatively we need a new party, one that is not even further out on the lunatic fringe.\u00a0 Yes, a new party that caters to the morals and value of the many occupying the silent middle ground of the \u201cvoid\u201d.<\/p>\n And we thought Egypt had a hard choice?\u00a0 The USA is no different at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why is it that the radical voices on either side of the political spectrum are granted such an inequitable amount of face time in the media?\u00a0 The answer is the same today as it has been since the start of the mass media phenomenon \u2013 bad news sells.\u00a0 In itself that is an indictment of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[134,135,295,323,363],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-egypt","tag-election","tag-obama","tag-politics","tag-romney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}