Political campaigning generates suspicions among the cerebral. What’s the motive other than to sell a promise wrapped up in emotion with questions like “Boxers or briefs, Mr. Clinton?” and “What flavor ice cream, Mr. Biden?” Politics has been relegated to entertainment and gossip for the masses, and not reasoned discussion. In the midst of an American political campaign, potential voters often get only grocery store check-out-aisle tabloid reporting. We’ve seen such appeals to emotions in every political convention as candidates surround themselves with musicians and entertainers, serving as warm-up acts on elaborately designed stages ringed by TV cameras. And nowadays, campaigns pre- and post- conventions take on the appearance of traveling road shows.
Speeches as Fiery as Dying Embers
Do Americans—or the masses of any country—need the hype? Aren’t most of them locked into voting on the basis of party loyalty?
“No,” you say. “At the very least, there’s the belief among candidates and their managers that Americans can be convinced, if not by reason, then by emotion, to change their voting preferences.”
You might be right. But what is the method for changing minds? Your opinion seems obviously correct in the context of the political road shows.
Remember Ross Perot? His campaigning centered on graphs and charts. Never an energetic or inspiring speaker, Perot tried to reason his way into the minds of American voters. His aim? The frontal cortex. His campaign, run as the product of a third party in a two-party country, was doomed from the outset though he did garner 19,743,821 votes (18.91% of the popular vote). Obviously, almost twenty million people were listening, but the guy who answered the underwear question won as Perot robbed votes from Bush.
Perot used those visual aids to make a point about national debt, an amount that has now surpassed $35,000,000,000,000. His reasoned arguments did not reach Clinton and Bush voters, possibly because of his method of messaging. Maybe if Ross had played the saxophone on TV and employed some pre-Miley-Cyrus twerking dancers, he could have succeeded in his run for the presidency, and the national debt would not be approaching infinity. Well, not infinity, but at its current rate in ten years interest on that debt will approach $2 trillion per year.
Twerking for Votes
Speaking of twerking, I have to ask whether or not you saw or read about a campaign event for Harris during which Megan Thee Stallion and others “twerked” in front of the audience. * What was the message? Was it about the national debt, about foreign affairs, the border crisis, giving away the amount of money equivalent to the the U.S. Army’s budget to pay off college loans? Was the message a reasoned argument aimed to win not the hearts but the minds of voters? Apparently, not so. From videos of the event, it seems obvious that some in the audience were pleased, maybe even pleased enough to vote for Harris and a future in which the White House, already debased in a topless display on the lawn during Biden’s pandering to special interests, will become the New Hollywood or Broadway given to entertaining the masses. Stay tuned as the politicians continue to twerk for the dopamine vote.
Campaigns evolve as people evolve, but they also seem to devolve as people devolve. Should we fault the campaign managers or the candidates for making entertainment the focus on a world stage? Aren’t they merely reflecting their culture? While we sing and dance our way toward an election, enemies committed to our destruction note our folly. “Those Americans! They are more interested in feelings than in facts, more interested in DEI and Wokeness than in actual threats.”
What’s next? We can’t get campaigning any more irrelevant to our present and future status or more insulting to our intelligence than inappropriate pandering twerkers. Or can we? Pandering seems to be the rule and not the exception. Go back to listen to Hilary Clinton’s and Al Gore’s exaggerated southern dialects in the presence of black audiences or go online to listen to Kamala Harris recently speak in feigned Georgian Black dialect and colloquialisms.
About the same time that Harris’s twerkers were entertaining folks in Georgia and she was feigning a southern dialect on stage, her husband walked among the Hmong, soliciting votes at a festival centered on the Hmong’s contributions to America during the Vietnam War. Pandering takes many forms, and astute campaign managers know when opportunity arises to reach pocket audiences. And why not? If Clinton’s underwear choice convinced the MTV crowd to vote for him, any pandering, including twerking pandering, is effective pandering.
November will reveal whether or not such tactics persuade Americans to cast ballots more from their amygdalae than from their frontal cortexes.
*See YouTube “Kamala Harris Gets BACKLASH for Megan Thee Stallion TWERKING at Her Presidential Rally in Atlanta” and numerous news accounts.
Speeches as Fiery as Dying Embers
Do Americans—or the masses of any country—need the hype? Aren’t most of them locked into voting on the basis of party loyalty?
“No,” you say. “At the very least, there’s the belief among candidates and their managers that Americans can be convinced, if not by reason, then by emotion, to change their voting preferences.”
You might be right. But what is the method for changing minds? Your opinion seems obviously correct in the context of the political road shows.
Remember Ross Perot? His campaigning centered on graphs and charts. Never an energetic or inspiring speaker, Perot tried to reason his way into the minds of American voters. His aim? The frontal cortex. His campaign, run as the product of a third party in a two-party country, was doomed from the outset though he did garner 19,743,821 votes (18.91% of the popular vote). Obviously, almost twenty million people were listening, but the guy who answered the underwear question won as Perot robbed votes from Bush.
Perot used those visual aids to make a point about national debt, an amount that has now surpassed $35,000,000,000,000. His reasoned arguments did not reach Clinton and Bush voters, possibly because of his method of messaging. Maybe if Ross had played the saxophone on TV and employed some pre-Miley-Cyrus twerking dancers, he could have succeeded in his run for the presidency, and the national debt would not be approaching infinity. Well, not infinity, but at its current rate in ten years interest on that debt will approach $2 trillion per year.
Twerking for Votes
Speaking of twerking, I have to ask whether or not you saw or read about a campaign event for Harris during which Megan Thee Stallion and others “twerked” in front of the audience. * What was the message? Was it about the national debt, about foreign affairs, the border crisis, giving away the amount of money equivalent to the the U.S. Army’s budget to pay off college loans? Was the message a reasoned argument aimed to win not the hearts but the minds of voters? Apparently, not so. From videos of the event, it seems obvious that some in the audience were pleased, maybe even pleased enough to vote for Harris and a future in which the White House, already debased in a topless display on the lawn during Biden’s pandering to special interests, will become the New Hollywood or Broadway given to entertaining the masses. Stay tuned as the politicians continue to twerk for the dopamine vote.
Campaigns evolve as people evolve, but they also seem to devolve as people devolve. Should we fault the campaign managers or the candidates for making entertainment the focus on a world stage? Aren’t they merely reflecting their culture? While we sing and dance our way toward an election, enemies committed to our destruction note our folly. “Those Americans! They are more interested in feelings than in facts, more interested in DEI and Wokeness than in actual threats.”
What’s next? We can’t get campaigning any more irrelevant to our present and future status or more insulting to our intelligence than inappropriate pandering twerkers. Or can we? Pandering seems to be the rule and not the exception. Go back to listen to Hilary Clinton’s and Al Gore’s exaggerated southern dialects in the presence of black audiences or go online to listen to Kamala Harris recently speak in feigned Georgian Black dialect and colloquialisms.
About the same time that Harris’s twerkers were entertaining folks in Georgia and she was feigning a southern dialect on stage, her husband walked among the Hmong, soliciting votes at a festival centered on the Hmong’s contributions to America during the Vietnam War. Pandering takes many forms, and astute campaign managers know when opportunity arises to reach pocket audiences. And why not? If Clinton’s underwear choice convinced the MTV crowd to vote for him, any pandering, including twerking pandering, is effective pandering.
November will reveal whether or not such tactics persuade Americans to cast ballots more from their amygdalae than from their frontal cortexes.
*See YouTube “Kamala Harris Gets BACKLASH for Megan Thee Stallion TWERKING at Her Presidential Rally in Atlanta” and numerous news accounts.
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