|
Whitaker's Weekly Articles – October 30, 2004
|
October 30, 2004 –
A Man With A Memory Looks at "Critical Elections"
October 30, 2004 –
Deckchair Science
October 30, 2004 –
2004 is Another Titanic Election
October 30, 2004 –
Meanwhile, Back at the Titanic...
Fun Quote:
There are many roads to Hell.
One is to replace the worship of the Golden Calf with the worship of the Holy Land and call it Christianity.
A Man With A Memory Looks at "Critical Elections"
|
This is the fifteenth presidential election I personally remember. Every single one of them was "the most critical election of our generation." We always heard that line at party conventions. The whole point of a presidential convention is to make its candidate look important.
On Tuesday, October 26, the Fox News Network announced that the 2004 election is "the most important election of our generation."
Last week in our Fun Quote I repeated the following Henry Kissinger statement:
"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
For most of us who inhabit Planet Earth, that is the problem with the 2004 election. As Gertrude Stein said about Los Angeles, "There is no THERE there."
The 2004 election? WHAT election?
Someone might say that the worrying about Bush or Kerry is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. When you say that, you are underestimating the detailed expertise of our paid political experts.
A political expert would not be rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic. He would discuss each chair in detail. A professional would not just let you go ahead and move the chairs around. He would perform detailed studies of each deck chair.
What exactly do YOU know about deck chairs? Do you really know what a deck chair looks like? Most people have never seen one, except when they were being sat on by someone on a television show.
There are people who devote their entire lives to the production of deck chairs. Yet here you are talking about moving them around as if you knew all about them.
Some people who make deck chairs have arthritis. They SUFFER to produce those deck chairs. How dare you talk about deck chairs when you have never SUFFERED?
The people who arrange deck chairs spend YEARS at sea. They know what they are doing.
How DARE you discuss rearranging deck chairs!
You may try to say that you weren't really talking about deck chairs. People who have SUFFERED making deck chairs, professional crewmen who have spent years conducting cruises will ask you, "Then why did you bring up deck chairs like you were some sort of expert?"
If you didn't mean to talk about deck chairs you should never have insulted the people who make them and the people who have spent their lives conducting cruises.
This might give you a pretty good idea of politics as I know it.
Don't worry about the Titanic.
Worry about the people who make the deck chairs. You might offend them.
2004 Is Another Titanic Election
|
The first article here was one of my "Man With A Memory..." pieces.
In every other "Man With A Memory" article I have started by quoting what people are saying and then ridiculing it by talking about real history. This time I repeated the usual line, "This is the most important election in our generation."
Regular readers would naturally expect me to make fun of this statement.
But there is nothing ridiculous about it. I have been through fifteen presidential elections, and not one of the close ones was any more important than this one.
Let me repeat Henry Kissinger's statement in this context: "Presidential politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
If someone says that X's rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic was more important than the other fourteen times those deck chairs were rearranged, who has the right to laugh at him?
Political professionals have every right to say that their rearrangement of the deck chairs is the most important, as long as they do not insult anybody who makes deck chairs.
They must also recognize the importance of those whose expertise and hard work made those deck chairs possible. They must also recognize the expertise of those who arranged those deck chairs in the first place.
Meanwhile, Back at the Titanic...
|
Fifteen elections in my lifetime and what has changed? Can anyone besides a leftist or a respectable conservative name ONE THING that our government has done to better our lot as a people?
Think of the millions of hours of work spent by everyday Americans on these campaigns, the billions of dollars spent. And for what? More of the above.
To rearrange the deck chairs while the ship goes down. And to "appeal to voters" who might be insulted if you say anything bad about deck chairs or silly political platforms.
Once again people will work and vote for Bush because he is "better than the alternative." In other words, his deck chair arrangement is cuter.
If a fraction of the time and effort spent by well-meaning Americans on these presidential campaigns was directed at the soft underbelly of our enemies in the universities, the public schools, the Chamber of Commerce, the liberal churches, etc., the effects wouldn't show up right away, but they would make an enormous difference in the future.
The Political Professionals will keep doing what they do. We can continue to act like trained seals, or get down to work.
READBOB.COM
|
