I was on another blogger’s post one day, and during our conversation’s back-and-forth we came to the conclusion that America’s voting public has ADD. Now I know I’m not a medical or psychiatric professional, and I don’t believe he is either, but it seems like a simple diagnosis.
ADD = Attention Deficit Disorder. This is something I have a mild case of myself, but not when it comes to important matters like politics, career, etc. Without getting too technical about this, the condition is as it says, a person (or in my later point, the public) has a hard time maintaining focus on the matter at hand, and is easily distracted by other things, often even trivial ones.
This directly applies to the problem of our voting public in today’s America. JibJab’s “What We Call The News” is a poke at the lack of journalistic integrity of our news outlets, but they even allude to America’s ADD by mentioning that 3% of people can find Kabul on a map, but 96% have seen Britney Spear’s privates.
Where I see this ADD often play out is when the public doesn’t hold a politician’s feet to the fire for false promises, statements, or other. Often this is because they don’t remember what the politician said in his/her last speech.
Example: Obama claims he will not run for President in 2008.
Result: He is our president.
Example: Cheney lists reasons for NOT toppling Saddam.
Result: We invade Iraq.
I’m guessing that most viewers don’t remember one or both of just two of these examples. But so what, right? Politicians are masters of gamesmanship. They are also masters of perception. On top of this ego is the main driving factor for most of them to hit national office. So, you’ve got egotistical masterminds of playing games of perception choosing the fate of this country. That’s what.
Now 10-15 years ago, I was one of those people who said “who cares about politics?” It wasn’t long after muttering those words when I started noticing the consistencies of injustices by these politicians, and that they were driven by gaining votes to clinch elections which served to justify their tactics, and further inflate their egos. What do most people do after saying similar words, and seeing some of the same things? Blow it off, ignore, complain. As a business owner, I’ve never seen a lot of results come from complaining, so I began to educate myself. I sat down and mapped out what issues I felt to be important. I then thought about how to solve the problems, or what problems the issues I supported might cause. After this, I looked to politicians that claimed to have the answers, and followed them. If they followed through as incumbents, they got my vote. If not, I voted for the next person who claimed to agree, and so on.
The problem is, this takes some time, interest and work. Our sound-bite society is more interested in complaining than taking initiative and fixing a problem. You DO get what you pay for. In this case, the price offered is lack of interest. The product delivered, deceitful and inept politicians. Just like in human beings, they try to help those with ADD, we really need to help our public overcome this hinderance.
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: ADD, attention, Bush, Centrist, Cheney, Conservative, Deficit, Democrat, disorder, Indepependent, liberal, moderate, Obama, Politics, public, republican, Third, united states, Vote, voting
ADD or as I have come to call it…..rational ignorance effect…..
I agree, I feel that people get all worked up around election time, listen to the soundbites on television to form their opinion and then vote based on the soundbites without ever really examining the issues. After the election they stop paying attention until the next election rolls afound, and the cycle starts all over. Luckily many of these people don’t even bother to vote in the midterms so we have the change to fix any mistakes.
I think you make a strong point about the mid-terms and how they often correct some of the hype.
Those are great examples. It’s all part of the modern American make-up. We’re all concerned about the here-and-now, fast-food diners, downloadable movies, instant coffee… instant, instant, instant…
Of course, you might say that this has nothing to do with politics, but it does – it has to. Culture has no history… no past… unless there’s dirt on you, and even then not everyone will hold that against you. Our modern memory has no archives, and therefore the whole idea of “learning from the past” is moot. The past – what’s that?
So yeah – right on, except that it’s not just the voting public, and it’s not just political. It’s everything and everyone.
Agreed, but since I’m focusing on politics, I thought my little hands might fall off including all of the other sections of society. Great points.
Of course it’s everything – and it’s NOT just America either (although many Americans do appear to think that the US is the whole and complete universe).
In the UK and I suspect there’s a lot of this in the US too, the problem is not the politicians because anyone with any wisdom ignores most of them anyway. No, the REAL problem is the bureaucrats who are the CONTINUITY!
It doesn’t much matter which political administration you choose (they’re mostly all a bunch of inept jerks anyway) – the civil servants (do you call them that in the US?) remain the same and push politicians and legislation in the direction THEY want, which rarely seems to coincide with normal people’s idea of what’s wanted because they (the bureaucrats) frequently think there is intrinsic value in pushing bits of paper in quadruplicate around and pontificating instead of actually DOING anything.