2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Count Down [View all]malthaussen
(17,184 posts)What causes me to mourn is that our politics has, I think, so far moved into the cult of personality as to make rational discourse all but impossible. Dare to disagree, however mildly, with any candidate's position on this or that issue, and one is labelled a "hater" and the substance of his argument ignored, or distorted beyond all recognition. I have in the past noticed that there are people here whose primary concern seems to be "winning" a debate at all costs, no matter the price in intellectual honesty or the search for truth. I think this is in large part a consequence of "celebrity politics," in which the main concern seems to be with appearances and star-quality, and the minions of this or that politician often remind me of that Alabama football fan who murdered a person in a bar because the latter was not sad enough that Alabama lost. It goes without saying that this condition is endemic on the Right, where the two most popular candidates have scarcely uttered a true thing between them, but I am sorry that the same thing appears to be taking control on the Left as well, or at least in some of the more vocal inmates of the Left.
And, dear Sir. we apparently find ourselves living in a country where one of the most burning issues of the day is the color a coffee shop chooses for its cups. One does not have to be an old fogey, I hope, to find this a little painful, to say nothing of embarrassing.
-- Mal