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Podcast 504

Choices. A companion to the ‘slipping into summer’ podcast for the political junkies. Choices. The Choices we make, politically, As the primary season draws to a close, Memorial Day Weekend is a good place to take stock of what has happened in this tumultuous and unpredictable 2016 Presidential Preference Primary and Caucus season. In Podcast 503 there was some discussion of an uneasy feeling seeing FB posts from politicos about the weekend’s conventions and promotions of party unity. This gets explored a lot more deeply in Podcast 504; Choices. Republican presidential preference primary and caucus voters have settled on Donald J. Trump as their choice for nominee of the republican party. While it remains to be seen whether Trump actually gets to the RNC with enough delegates to clinch the nomination, or whether some other fate befalls the New York Developer and Realty Television Star, it’s significant that republican and so called ‘conservative’ voters have settled on three major pools of thought. The ‘Trumpist’ pool which seems to be about winning the argument, the evangelist and self-described ‘constitutionalist’ pool represented by the Cruz supporters and the establishment pool, which is about the status quo. There’s one other pool, but it’s really a puddle; The Libertarian pool which is the only group that actually wants to reduce the size, scope and power of government. On the democrat side, is an establishment political operator who can only be described as a Statist (with a capital S) and a self described Democratic Socialist, really a socialist and also a STATIST. So, voters have settled on a political insider who is also a statist, a socialist and a populist statist, with second choices that include politicians who claim to be ‘conservative’ but are also going to make sure ‘The Government’ operates more efficiently. Sigh. What are the takeaways? These are the people the voters – who have been exhorted to get involved – have chosen. Of these three or four, one will be President of The United States. In November the voters will choose a president, a congress and a third of the US Senate, as well as a slew of statewide and state legislative and local officers across the country. What will it mean? What will happen? The media keeps trying to tell us, but we cannot know the future. We’re just going to have to wait and see. Takeaways for political junkies on Memorial Day Weekend. Sponsored by Brush Studio, in the West End, Saint Louis Park.

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Podcast 486

Republicans Need To Grow Up. As Ted Cruz ‘steals’ Colorado’s delegates to the RNC, Trump supporters throw a fit. If the Republicans lose the 2016 presidential election it won’t be the so called establishment’s fault. If the Republicans lose the 2016 presidential election it won’t even be the candidate’s fault. If the Republicans lose the 2016 presidential election, and its Senate majority it will be the Republican Rank and File voter’s fault. If this week’s tantrums are any example, Republicans Need To Grow Up. And soon. These podcasts have stated again and again that people voting in so called presidential primaries are not selecting a candidate. Candidate selection is done at the convention, by convention delegates. As Donald Trump and his supporters rage about the system being rigged its time for some truth telling. Yes, children, the system is rigged. If you want to change it you are going to have to take over the system. Unfortunately the GOP rank and file is filled with people who have a shocking lack of depth on issues, a breathtaking ignorance on context and the emotional maturity of an eighth grader (and that’s being kind), and no stomach for the hard work political change requires. Voting in elections is not enough. Change requires people be wiling to serve, not stand up at meetings and talk about ‘messaging’. The Republican party is populated with a majority of people who think an argument is an insult, a meme, a video someone else posted five years ago, a discussion on FaceBook that lasts all of two exchanges, the last one something along the lines of, “You love Obama”, or “You’re voting for Hillary, aren’t you?”. These people — and there are a lot of them — do not have the emotional maturity or political knowledge to win a presidential election. Period. They aren’t able to argue, or reason. They aren’t ‘conservatives’, they can’t even define what a ‘conservative’ is. Republicans are Tories, concerned about the future but still loyal to the crown. In this podcast someone actually defines the political spectrum in terms that make sense, and explains why republicans and democrats don’t seem to have a problem with government solutions and socialism. If you really want to change things, its going to take more than being angry. Sponsored by Hydrus and Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park, Mn.

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Podcast 478

On Media. It started out as an idea for a podcast on Friday. A departure from the increasingly tedious, even terrifying and depressing world of politics. As the weekend progressed and opportunities for socializing were offered, ‘On Media’ moldered, then morphed into something more complex. After several attempts to assess what the podcast would be about, one attempt to write it and three attempts to record it, I finally just said the hell with it and decided to talk it out. Thus ‘On Media’. Some of it is a repackaging of ideas behind the podcasts I’ve done about the fact that the mass marketing most of us have gown up in is gone, replaced with a new world of mass specialization. People ask me all the time what is going on in the world. What’s wrong with the media. Or, they tell me the media is at fault. The media is bad. What is the definition of media? What is it’s role in society? What’s really going on? These days we have millions of sources of information available at any time. Any one of those sources can be the most viewed in any single day. It is not unusual for You Tube channels to have more views in a few hours than the cable news channels have all week. In the middle of this is politics. All news coverage is emotional and symbolic. There used to be a tactic called political theater. Now it’s all theater. Politics is media. We are submerged in images of persuasion everywhere we go. From the logos on the clothing we wear, to the TV’s in bars pouring their images into our minds while we eat our burgers. All these images are emotional, and emotional because emotion persuades. You think people seem angry, frustrated, confused? Wonder why? We can’t seem to get a handle on what’s wrong. Our government is the product of something called The Enlightenment. Are we enlightened? Or enslaved? Sponsored by Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park, and by Hydrus Performance.

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