Thursday, May 26, 2016

Will America's Greatest Export Become Ignorance?

A question that would be sad enough to ponder if it weren't for the fact that an argument could be made that we've perhaps already made it so. And that we've done this with marketing BS as a way of life.

Just consider this telling quote from the nbcnews.com article linked below:

"They are not sure how seriously to take some of his pronouncements but they're rattled by him — and for good reason, because a lot of the proposals that he's made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude," Obama added.
He suggested Trump's controversial proposals were more about "getting tweets and headlines" than "actually thinking through" what's needed to keep America safe or the "world on an even keel."

Which is no more than to say we've come to live by government as "Reality TV," where PR and marketing rule as a matter of course to begin with, and made much worse as we take outlandish behavior as mere thematic embellishment (as a kind of permanent sweeps week mentality), to pump the numbers up. In that context why wouldn't a reasonable person be made weary.

That we would now present to the rest of the world a strutting huckster as our leader is perhaps only a fitting exclamation to the depths of fantasy as a way life that we have fallen into, and the farce we have made out of governing ourselves. If this isn't collective insanity I certainly don't know what is.