(August 20, 2017 at 8:22 am)chimp3 Wrote:(August 20, 2017 at 8:05 am)Alex K Wrote: Good for him, really!Rationale discourse in the U.S. political arena has been taking a siesta for decades. It's all about sound bites and memes.
But, it has become so ridiculously easy to play the political hero under and with Trump, and that's also a problem. People like Arnie and Macron can make videos stating obvious and normally uncontroversial things like "Nazis bad", "You shouldn't cancel all environmental policies", "science is useful" that 10 years ago wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, and get celebrated as heroes. That also means that you don't have to make the effort and political sacrifice to discuss complicated or really controversial and difficult topics anymore, because "Nazis are bad, Mr. President" earns you all the publicity and political profile you need. A monkey could write a valid criticism of the Trump administration.
Does America still remember how to discuss actual policy and offer criticism on more subtle issues than "Arrest all the muslims and nuke Korea!" or will they have forgotten how that works after Trump is gone, because they were occupied with complete absurdities for so long.
Exactly. American public discourse has been in the toilet for a long time. Christ, it seems like just yesterday to me, but was years ago now, that Jon Stewart single-handedly took down "Crossfire" for being the clown show it was.
This is what it's come to: comedians are the serious people and our "leaders" supply the punch lines while throwing cream pies at each other. The Trump administration is just the nadir of a downward slide that's been unfolding my entire life. We are not a serious people; we are not world leaders. We just have an enormous economy and a lot of weapons.
It's not going to get better once Trump is gone, either. We were supposed to have grown up and got serious after Bush left office. We all know how that went.
