…and his sister is a thespian:
The local Sioux Falls paper notes that the voting percentage in the most recent school board election was 3.55% in an editorial asking for voting to be made easier by eliminating precinct voting in favor of at-large polling places scattered around the city.
Personally, I think that’s more likely to confuse the heck out of people used to the old system and drop the vote percentages further as they give up on trying to figure out what to do. The problem is gtting people to get positively involved, if that’s not too much trouble. But read on…
In another story, the ‘”Obama Care, the Trojan Horse of Socialism” plywood horse was rolling through Sioux Falls, courtesy of a local “tea party” group that was trying to whip up support by suggesting a remote hazy connection between the health care bill and some secret Marxist cabal trying to take over the US and enforce communism on the citizenry.
Both, to me, are seriously icky examples of the notion that you don’t have to think hard about what political issues are all about, or to consider the important issues in elective politics - just scream a few brainless slogans. Pass along wild stories that don’t even try to show fact but just pull up some invented ‘well, it could be’ connection between someone you politically disagree with and Some Great Purported Evil.
If nobody cares about the school system, except to push their kid through fast and as cheaply as possible, you end up with a mess. But it was cheap!
If nobody cares to carefully think over political issues, the level of debate drops to abuse, and nothing useful gets done - and another boost is given to the people who are really profiting from the situation. Which generally aren’t the people repeating the slogans.
It ends up with moronic statements like ‘get government’s hands out of my medicare’, because Medicare, of course, falls from the skies and has nothing to do with the government. This YouTube gives the audio of Reagan, in 1961, railing about ’socialized medicine’ and the evils thereof - referring to Medicare.
(If you want a gross example, do a google search of “trojan horse of socialism” and see how many things have been considered forerunners of socialism, including stuff like fluoridated water - or miscegenation. )
I’m waiting for the suppressed secret study that shows that eating and breathing has been linked to an increased death rate in 100% of all cases. And socialism, too.
Sheesh.