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The way to deal with the celebrity charge is not to lower your profile; its to turn that charge back around on McCain. If I were advising Obama, Id tell him to get up there in front of that sold out stadium and say the following:
My opponent has taken to calling me a celebrity in all of his commercials. The suggestion, I can only assume, is that all of you (gesturing to the crowd) show up at events like this and donate your time and your money to this campaign because youre all adoring groupies who are obsessed with me. Now, that would certainly be flattering if it were true, but Im not going to delude myself. The reality is I cant act, I cant sing, and my personal life is incredibly boring.
The truth is that no one would be paying any attention to me at all if I wasnt talking about things that really matter to a lot of people. Youre not here tonightand youre not watching at homebecause you want to be entertained. Lord knows there are plenty of things that you could be doing with your time right now that would be far more entertaining than listening to me. No, youre here tonight because you love your country and youre concerned about the direction its been heading over the last eight years.
Youre not here tonight to see what kind of outfit Im wearing or to hear my latest hit singleand if you are, I think youre probably going to be disappointed. No, youre here because you want change, you want a government that fights for people like you and not on behalf of powerful special interests; you want a government that keeps you safe by pursuing a rationale foreign policy abroad and keeps your family secure by creating jobs, ensuring access to affordable health care, and fighting for energy independence.
Thats why youre here. Thats why youre volunteering your time at record levels. Thats why youre contributing your hard-earned money in record amounts.
So remember, when John McCain and his surrogates call me a celebrity, theyre not insulting me; theyre insulting you. Theyre insinuating that you are a mindless groupie rather than a concerned citizen, a fan rather than a voter.
But its not going to work. You know why youre here, you know why youre watching, and youre much smarter than they give you credit for.
Sometimes I think subtlety is lost on the masses when it comes to advertising. But there is truth there and if Obama can win this one it will change the way he is perceived, it will change a divide that has been so large I still hear it from many.
"For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle as we did in the OJ trial or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wrights sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that shes playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, well be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change." Barack Obama
Nothing will change even if he is elected. Politics is always about distractions. You really need to learn to read between the lines when you see this talk that is meant to distract you .
Nothing will change even if he is elected. Politics is always about distractions. You really need to learn to read between the lines when you see this talk that is meant to distract you .
This celebrity angle being taken by the McCain campaign is one such distraction that you speak of ...
Do you think that it is an empty attack which insults the intelligence of the voters?
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I do tend to agree with you that nothing will change if Obama is elected ... he has showed himself to be a lot more "politician" than the true believers think he is but on the other hand I can understand midcan5's feelings that we need to "lose the cynicism." To me it seems like America is losing it's "can-do" attitude.
It is nearly impossible not to be cynical in today's America. We have 2 parties who could give a fuck less about us.
That depends on what you replace it with. Cynicism isn't just a fad that popped up. It's a coping mechanism. It's dealing with reality and less destructive than the hostility and hopelessness that it suppresses.
I've given up on trying to assess the intelligence of the American voter. I don't see any tools that I could use that would give me an accurate way to measure political intelligence.
That's a good point you make about cynicism ...
I wonder if it could just be replaced or if something needs to happen in order to justify a collective change of heart ...
I would like to think someone could make it happen but ----?
I dunno ... was hoping you did
Seriously ...
I think we had a chance after 9/11 but bitter partisanship on both ends ruined that chance ...
Now, I'm guessing it will be born out of necessity ...
A real bi-partisan comprehensive enery policy that included a change over to a new energy source IMO would help create that atmosphere ...
But then the whole question of what are we going to switch to is a bit of a problem ...
And now I'm cynical again ...
No clue--I thought 9/11 might do it too-- ya--hyperpatisanship with the assistance of the media seems to have dashed all that.
I agree with the necessity thing--a common goal, a common enemy ?
Globalism feels sorta bla. An Austin, Texas swimmer competing for Zimbawe in the olympics?
I think competition and opposition help create an identity and encourage people to do there best. If we are all on the same team --? bla
Politics is always about distractions. You really need to learn to read between the lines when you see this talk that is meant to distract you .
Truer words were never spoken.
Today's political motus operandi is all about distracting the voters with buzz words, issues of little real signficance and half truthes.
I blame the power of television for this trend, to be honest.
Not that pols were more honest before it, but it harder to bullshit people on paper BECAUSE THE PAPER IS LESS EPHEMERAL than television.
It's actually more complex than just that, but what appears to be happening to me is that pols operate under the assumption that what they said last week bears no importance on what they say this week, and since most people only get their news from TV or radio, they're mostly right about that.
For example...NOW we're got obvious right wingers calling Hillary a moderate leaning to the left.
Don't we all know remember the vile things that they USED to day about her?
Well, perhaps some of us can't remember the past.
Those of us with that annoying persistence of memory cannot forget it though.
Eventually what happens to US is that we realize its really ALL bullshit realy all the time from these guys.
The ONLY way to know what pols are really all about is to see what they did, NOT to listen to what they say they will do.
It is nearly impossible not to be cynical in today's America. We have 2 parties who could give a fuck less about us.
3. Cynic Ethics
Foremost for understanding the Cynic conception of ethics is that virtue is a life lived in accord with nature. Nature offers the clearest indication of how to live the good life, which is characterized by reason, self-sufficiency, and freedom.
Social conventions, however, can hinder the good life by compromising freedom and setting up a code of conduct that is opposed to nature and reason. Conventions are not inherently bad; however, for the Cynic, conventions are often absurd and worthy of ridicule.
The Cynics deride the attention paid to the Olympics, the “big thieves” who run the temples and are seen carrying away the “little thieves” who steal from them, politicians as well as the philosophers who attend their courts, fashion, and prayers for such things as fame and fortune.
Only once one has freed oneself from the strictures that impede an ethical life can one be said to be truly free. As such, the Cynics advocate askēsis, or practice, over theory as the means to free oneself from convention, promote self-sufficiency, and live in accord with nature.
Such askēsis leads the Cynic to live in poverty, embrace hardship and toil, and permits the Cynic to speak freely about the silly, and often vicious, way life is lived by his or her contemporaries.
The Cynics consistently undermine the most hallowed principles of Athenian culture, but they do so for the sake of replacing them with those in accord with reason, nature, and virtue.
You people use the cynicism as an epithet.
Understandable since that is the meaning that is most often used conventionally.
But like many such common wisdoms it is basically wrong.
Many of you here on this board actually advocate cynicism , and don't really realize it.
It may behoove some of you to know what cynicism really is. because some of you who are cynics probably do need to know that:
1. You are not alone in the world for thinking the way you do; and
2. You are probably among the world's vanguard who sees through the bullshit in his world and calls the world on it. (What I'm trying to tell you all here is that calling somebody a cynic isn't an insult, it's a high compliment)
One more point...some of you leaning to the right here are obviously cynics, and some of you leaning to the left are ALSO cynics.
The philosophical cynic really has no inherent political positions to which they will adhere, but merely eschews bullshit social conventional thinking whenever and whereever it he finds it.
Read on below, or read more here
I STRONGLY advise SOME of you to folow that link and ponder the meaning of cynicism.
YOU are not crazy, the world definitely is, and this was as true three-thousands years ago, as it is today.
At least some of you who are marching to the beat of a different drummer have been cynics your whole lives and probably didn't know it.
