The stupidity of bipartisanship and America, the numbing of the global electorate and it's impact

Follow any election from the past and you will see that America has been polorised since the very beginning. The only exceptions have been in times of war.

I agree that mainstream media is a problem but it goes far beyond Fox News. Donald Trump is the result of a mass media that cares more about shock coverage than actual substance.

Every single candidate running on both sides is out campaigning yet I rarely read anything about them. When is the last time you heard about a speech Jim Webb gave? The only thing I've read about Martin O'Malley is the incident with black lives matter and his fight with the DNC on debates. Bernie Sanders was being completely ignored even when drawing huge crowds. That only changed recently due to his poll numbers. Now if Jim Webb came out and said something outlandish like "Donald Trump's ideas are as outlandish as his hair do" the media would be all over it. Hence the dumbing down of news coverage and with it the dumbing down of America.

They counted on a trump character in the constitution. That is why we have electorates.

They are not fully campaigning yet. They are doing photo ops and press releases.

Actually it kinduv is. Fox news gets the elderly. Their main demo is in the high 60s . The core of that demo is old and scared. The reason why fox has such great ratings is not because they are good. It is because younger people get their information online, and the older people are not tech savy. They use the TV, and fox news talks to them on their level. It really is a problem over here. My grandmother used to have fits about going to the doctors because she thought obama was trying to kill her through them. She grew up in Nazi Germany, and even though we are nowhere near that level and think it evil, she got the message fox was sending. They are going to put you in the hospital and steal all your money and your kids will never see you again. If I could make a lawsuit against FOX news for scaring my grandmother and making her cry I would. They litteraly are scaring the money out of the elderly and it is awful. It goes way too far and has wrecked a nation of families.

What makes you think it was just the last 15-20 years? In the 50s we spawned McCarthyism. 60s it was the vietnam war. 70s Nixon. 80s Reagan. For a while in the 90s we had a moderate government and a gangbuster economy, but we also had Newt Gingrich.

This country has been divided on ideological lines going back to slavery.

for @T.R

http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/05/fox-newss-old-viewership-is-getting-even-older/371792/

Here is a little reading for your ignorant ass.

But don't forget the words of Sybil Faulty: it's only lately that we're seeing [it] on the telly.

Thus chup's confused perception of reality is understandable. Nothing really goes on in the world until we happen to notice it, then we think how clever that we spotted it.

Yeah, I know, I feel the same way about a-Leprechaunists.
It's so arrogant of them to not believe in Leprechauns without having read all the serious scholarship on Leprechaun-ology.
Also, science hasn't looked at every atom in the universe, so how can you dismiss a Leprechaun hiding behind one of them somewhere?
So philosophically dishonest.

Humans have a very small view of the universe, or perhaps this universe. I can say it is highly unlikely that a leprechuan exists here aside from an idea, but I most certainly cannot say for the entirety of existence that there is not one out there. I doubt the universe is going to show me, or any atheist, all of it's doings. Along the lines of infinite possibilities there is a chance that somewhere out there that thing you imagine exists. Small is the mind that limits itself merely to what we have seen so far considering our history.

The invisible is fun to play with for fantasy and science fiction, and even the extreme side of scientific conjecture, but no one lives their day to day lives trying not to step on fairies.
For all you know, every time you shut your fridge door, your food becomes cartoon characters that sing, and dance, and have hopes and dreams, and loves, like a Pixar movie, but you don't live your life under that expectation, or you'd starve to death.
In daily existence, in order to function, everyone is an a-Leprechaunist, an a-Fairyist, an a-dancing-sandwich-ist.
Gods are no more special than the fairies.
No more special than the dancing sandwiches.
Only cultural inertia, and emotional attachment say otherwise.

And in that era, one senator beat another with a cane so badly he nearly died, while a representative held other senators off with a pistol.

Sort of puts today's "incivility" in a different light...

Yep. It's impossible to be an anti-union, pro-gun, pro-military, pro-interventionist, economic centrist and still be considered liberal.

I am pro-union, anti-gun, think the military needs to be cut, am generally anti interventionist, and an economic centrist. While we are at it I am pro-national single payer and support a larger welfare state (but limit it for migrants).

All in all pretty liberal.

You pretty much described JFK. What has happened to liberalism?

This is true. The media is supposed to be a watchdog; they should be our eyes and ears for the places we can't go, as well as a conscience to hold the halls of power responsible for what they do and say. Instead, they're more like gossip magazines, and I include all "legitimate" news agencies in that one; If it's salacious, it's splashed on the front page, but if it's policy based, it is more likely to be ignored, or covered on some back section of their site where no one is paying attention.

As I've put it for years, people need some vegetables instead of (or in addition to) junk food, but we tend to serve up the latter much more than the former.

That's why so many of us in the industry enjoyed the premise (if not the execution) of The Newsroom on HBO.

Of course giving people their "veggies" ended up hurting that fictional news outfit's ratings.

Because we're like children. We don't want to eat what's good for us, we want what tastes good, and at this point we've stuffed ourselves with so much candy, even the sweetest apple of truth tastes bland and unnatural.

Now I'm hungry.

Vegetables don't have snazzy ad campaigns, which is why people eat less of them, why they can't sponsor programs, and why the metaphorical veggies get less air.

I did not say they exist here. I said we are too small sighted to know if they exist elsewhere. I am assuming you are an atheist. I am also assuming now you are one of the annoying hipster atheists who thinks every person who imagines something is a dingbat. This is the reason I steer clear of atheists. You are as manipulative and annoying as OT9 scientologist. So take that smug and stick it up your ass. If you want to insult me do it, but don't half ass the argument in a passive aggressive attempt to lure me in with the most shallow of intellectual fodder.

This is why no one defends atheists. They are the mimes of the science world. I am glad you believe there are no gods out there, you do not have to. However, when you start taking over that christian pedestal you might want to take a look at how you are behaving.

Yeah, I know, what a bastard I am, and indeed all atheists are, because slaughtering illogical arguments on an internet message board with not a shred of remorse is just like stoning adulterers, burning witches, committing genocide on whole cities of non-believers, sexually mutilating women, and fucking piles and piles of kids, and getting away with it via diplomatic immunity.
Yep, just exactly the same.

I've also seen a number of you double park on more than one occasion, you remorseless, godless, placard eschewing bastards.

Do you want a Pabst blue ribbon to go with your smug mr. hipster. I do believe starbucks called and said one of their less intelligent drones wandered off on them, I think you should go back.

You would not expect a hipster to abide by common road markings. And beware of going to starbucks, they do something to the coffee there I am quite sure of it.

I'm a teatotaller, never set foot in a Starbucks, never will, I drive quite well, and I don't follow fashion, counter-culture, mainstream, or otherwise.
So...I don't know what you're on about, but if you wanna tucker yourself out beating up a strawman, by all means, burn those calories, it's no skin off my nose.


I do have to note though you seem to have run out of God-belief arguments.

The two party system is broken. We need more variety, not the same old bullshit.

A viable third or even fourth party would be very welcome. Sadly, the one thing the two parties can agree on is they don't want any viable third parties and they are not shy about rigging the system to insure that doesn't happen.

Califonia innovates quite a lot but one thing I don't like is the new system which only allows the top two candidates to run the general election.

It usually does.

We have a two party system because it makes the bribes more manageable.

If you had to potentially bribe 6-10 candidates in every district, it would be chaos.

Soon you'd see the actual underpinnings of democracy, and clearly we can't have that.

Can I get a harumph?


Harumph, harumph, harumph.

Nope, not a horror fan. RL, in my experience, contains sufficient horror. I don't find it entertaining.