Politics

Warning: This is long, and about politics. I understand that politics may seem boring for a lot of people. That makes me sad. If you aren't very interested in politics, you probably will skip this post, but you should read it because politics should be important to everyone.

About a month ago, a man named Rick Shenkman was on The Daily Show. He has written a book called Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. I decided that he was probably right, so I put his book on hold at the library and decided to read more political columns and blogs online. I just finished his book this morning. It was a quick read, and pretty convincing. He argues that voters are sometimes ignorant but oftentimes misinformed.

For example, 1 in 4 Americans cam name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. However, more than half of Americans cam name two members of the fictional cartoon family The Simpsons. 22% can name all five members, but only 1 in 1000 people can name all five freedoms. Just so you know, I couldn't either, but I'll hopefully never forget it now. I knew four, but here are the five: speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances.

He also speaks of our nation becoming a nation of slogans and soud-bites, which is totally true. If someone can't explain something quickly, we lose attention. We need to overcome this. He argues that "If an abstract word is used in a speech with no meaningful referent, the listener should disregard it. If the word freedom is not defined precisely, it should be ignored." Now, I don't think every thing needs to be defined, but we need to be more able to recognize when they are using words as propaganda or slogans and not as real substance.

He had an intersting story about the effect of tv. In the 1960 presidental campaign, Kennedy and Nixon debated. If you read the transcripts, they come out looking even. However, people who watched it on tv were likely to say that Kennedy had won the debate. This is only because Kennedy's staff manipulated conditions to their advantage. They knew Nixon was a sweater, so they raised the room temperatures. They knew Nixon had an injured leg, so they made it so the candidates had to stand a lot.

He argues that polls have too much influence, without really showing if the person being questioned really knows about the subject. Therefore, he thinks those types of questions should be asked before asking their opinion, which I totally agree with.

He had a lot of good arguments. He was biased towards one political side, as authors usually are. One thing I have to mention that made me mad, though, was that he quoted Virginia Woolf and he didn't even spell her name right. (Of course, I believe that she is one of the world's greatest authors, so I'm biased in being upset.)

I've also recently read The Good Fight
by Senator Harry Reid. He is the Democrat Senate Leader, and he is LDS. It was very interesting to me, since I am also LDS and lean to the more liberal side as well.

Here are a few online things I've read recently:

Americans Move to the Middle
- This is about how more and more Americans are movind towards the midlle of the political spectrum.

Getting to Know You
- This is a profile on John McCain. It's negative, but don't worry... if you're Republican, the next link will be more to your liking.

The Senator Hasn't Shown Us Much Yet

-This addresses Barack Obama's recent trip and if it has had any effect on his opinions about the war.