Campaigns Make People Lose Their Minds
It's getting hard to take. I'm seeing things posted on social media and shown on the news that really make me wonder if there's something in the water. Somebody on social media posted a short video of a young girl saying something silly about a guy from England "who's good at English" (or something like that) with the byline of "Look, She works for Trump!" I heard in the news recently where Trump had called for riots at the Convention if the gets robbed of the nomination. Then, I hear the actual clip and he didn't do anything like that. There are the endless Hillary pieces - and she's no help to herself on that. Bernie, for some strange reason, is being handled with kid gloves by the media. But, if you look into the guy's history you can see he's just a loser. Reminds me of the true stories about Karl Marx. Then, there was the clip circulated showing Cruz trying to kiss a little girl and calling him a pervert. If you see the full clip you realize the little girl was his daughter and she was coming off his campaign bus, obviously ticked at her dad about something. It just goes on and on...all these doctored clips, misquotes, misrepresentations. What's troubling is that I know some pretty smart people who fall for anything as long as their candidate benefits. They've drank the cool aid. As somebody who has opted to remove myself from the whole thing I have experienced a unique take on it, apparently. I really can't wait for the campaign to end because I find that the mass stupidity weighs on me a little. It still bothers me - probably because I'm a father and my kids are going to be part of all this total malarkey. I think that's why it bothers me. If I were not a father I'd probably be lighting my cigars with dollar bills and shooting my guns in the air with glee over it all...
As for Bernie being handled with kid gloves... he has enough supporters that the Clintonphilia media will need. They have no problem trying to divide Trump or Cruz supporters as it is beneficial to their cause of one of the camps stays home.
We have differences, we can discuss them, we do not need to inflame people by exaggerating them.
I think there are two things going on:
1. It's so easy for people to blast out to the friends on social media things they wouldn't say in person. It seems like every single person I know is a Bernie Sanders supporter. They are very reserved and polite in person, but carry on more online. I am a Hillary Clinton supporter (Gary Johnson if I know a Republican won't be elected), so I just avoid the topic.
2. We don't have clear boundaries on gov't, so we depend on the politicians' character. Trump really does scare me in a way he couldn't scare me if we had a small central gov't with very strict boundaries.
Regarding kids, my 7 y/o follows it like sports, knowing how many wins each team needs to get to the bowl games. He says he's a Republican and his first choice is Kasich, but he's mainly interested in the score. He has a bizarre ability to memorize which state each candidate won and by how much. He does the same with sports, like knowing the score for big games, even ones from the 90s. My 5 y/o OTOH couldn't care any less about sports or politics.
I think my point about my 7-y/o is he approaches it with innocent alacrity, and it's nice to be around that perspective. Interest groups have reason to argue the fate of the world rests on an election. The 7-y/o view is closer to the truth.