Choices & Voices

I watched the presidential debate last night, and though I don’t feel as though I learned anything, I don’t necessarily think it did me any harm either. Maybe a little shoulder pain from cringing, but I’m confident I haven’t suffered any lasting damage. At first I just didn’t understand how this exercise could be useful in any way. I mean if you don’t know who you’re going to vote for by now, there’s nothing either of these yutzes are going to say in this stilted, awkward forum that could possibly make any difference is there?

Would you buy a used nation state from either of these guys?

Maybe there is. After thinking about it for a while, it occurred to me that the real problem with the debates isn’t the more or less complete lack of useful information, or the obnoxious, condescending tone on these faces of our prospective leaders. It’s not that there’s too much show biz and not enough substance.  Au contraire!  It’s that there’s too much substance and not enough show biz. 

C’mon, today the average American would never be able to survive, much less stay awake for even a single Lincoln-Douglas debate; forget the seven 3-hour yak fests. We just couldn’t handle it. Our ADD addled brains, coursing as they are with a colloidal mélange of high fructose corn syrup and McCuisine are just no longer capable of concentrating on complex issues or analyzing long-term strategy any more. Hell, it’s a wonder we’re even able to get dressed, feed ourselves and get to our spirit-crushing cubes at our soul-destroying jobs each day, given what mindless automatons our electors seem to think we are, based on the way the talk to us. 

Debates are a quaint, 19^th century idea that just doesn’t seem relevant in the digital age. If it wasn’t for the ability to be distracted by tweets during the debates, I doubt anyone under 40 would even bother. Just over half of us even rouse ourselves off the sofa long enough to vote. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We could jazz the whole thing up - make it appeal to contemporary sensibilities. It seems to me the electoral system ought to think about other ways Americans make choices and follow that model. I’m thinking reality TV, of course. You know, Survivor: Youngstown. So You Think You Don’t Suck. That sort of thing. Let people choose their representatives by texting their vote. Let Simon Cowell have some part in it. Could it really be much worse than it already is?