It seems as we approach the election, that the favored strategy of the media–once again–is to try to excuse one deplorable candidate’s innumerable faults by peddling the story that at least they’re not as SCARY as the other candidate.
Is your favored candidate a lifelong Washington power-broker who’s voted or connived to start multiple wars? For the media, this presents no problem: All they have to do is simply never mention any of those annoying facts (which they once proudly touted as hallmarks of their candidate’s “smart” foreign policy), while repeatedly running red-faced pictures of the opponent accompanied by half-baked conjecture on how he might send the world straight to nuclear armageddon with his “overheated rhetoric”… about, uh, Mexicans, or fat beauty queens, or the Russians which… uh… he’s apparently too friendly with.
I mean, crazy friendly. You know, like “start-a-war” friendly.
<Shudder!>
But seriously, folks, this stuff is nuts. And I can’t believe that not only are many otherwise perfectly sensible people playing along with it, but that they also bought it every four years going back to at least Reagan, if not earlier.
Look, anyone who knows me well knows that I regard this election as absolute horror show. There is literally nobody in the race who even remotely represents my point of view*. That said, at the end of the day, most of us are going to hold our noses and vote for the person we consider the least-bad of the bunch. But that doesn’t mean we have to simultaneously parrot the media’s insane talking points about how weally, weally scawwy the other guy is.
As it turns out, no matter who wins, the shocking truth is that:
- No one’s illegal immigrant gardener is going to be put in a cattle car and sent to the gas chambers. Even if they did overwater the roses.
- The president stands no risk at all of accidentally punching the “nuclear button” because they forgot to say “half-caf” when ordering that double-espresso.
- And no, women are not going to be “put in binders” or forced to use coat hangers for anything other than hanging clothes; and blacks are not going to be all “put back in chains” or hunted to extinction by legions of racist cops.
This is all, as they say, nonsense on stilts. But I can’t believe how many times I’ve heard the same conversations repeated earnestly at bars, in checkout lines, or on Facebook.
C’mon folks. Let’s change things up this (miserable) election and at least not embarrass ourselves by pretending the world works like any of that. Frankly, the folks in the press pushing these fairy stories are treating us with absolute contempt. Wouldn’t it be nice if for once we returned the favor instead of credulously playing along.
Hey, I can dream, right?
*I’m basically a John F. Kennedy Democrat–whose pro-business policies of lower taxes, free markets, and consistent support of human rights and freedom around the world, enabled by a muscular but restrained military– would mark both of us as troglodyte, fascist, Nazi mouth-breathers in today’s crazy political landscape.