Do you remember when
election ads were limited to election time!? Yeah! Those were the days!
The political ads have
been running for weeks now. Corey Gardener is a money-grubbing, heartless
monster according to one ad. Mark Udall is a smarmy, conniving Snake-Oil
Salesman according to another. The problem is that, since I am certain that
these ads have nothing to do with the recently-completed Jefferson Country
West-Metro Fire District election, these ads are for an election that is still
MONTHS away!
There is a 'well
established economic fact' that Douglas Adams invented for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (second series) on BBC: "The Shoe Event Horizon." According
to the theory, in a nutshell, when you are living in a society that is in
decline you are sad. When you're sad you look down. When you look down you see
your shoes. To cheer yourself up buy a new pair. So in a society that is in
serious decline it eventually becomes economically non-viable to build anything
but shoe shops.
I think that a version
of this is what we, here in the US, must be going through. Here is my theory on
the current situation:
We live in a society
where politics is driven by money. In order to get money the politicians must
pander to the needs of the very wealthy. In order to pander to the very wealthy
the parties move to positions that are good for the very few wealthy donors
they are courting. In order to keep the voters (and thus the power) so they can
continue to court the wealthy, and the money to stay in power, they have to
portray their opponents as being more extreme and less electable than they are
themselves. To do this, they buy attack ads. In response, their opponents buy
attack ads. In response, supporters of both sides buy attack ads. Fed-up with all the attack ads, the audience
starts tuning out and the attack ads lose their punch. So the parties do the
only logical thing and...
BUY MORE ATTACK ADS!
Eventually we reach the
inevitable conclusion of this coil of political madness:
The
Objurgation Event Horizon!
Every ad on television
is a political attack ad.
It becomes economically
impossible for a television station to sell anything but political attack ads.
The ads spread to radio, the internet, billboards, podcasts, tee-shirts,
sweatshirts, tattoos, stained-glass windows, every conceivable media is
eventually completely consumed by political attack ads.
The populace completely
tunes out. Without advertising, the difference between similar products becomes
as insignificant as most of us secretly had believed it was anyway. Brand
loyalty is eroded. Every product is the same and so nobody buys anything. All
the industry in the nation collapses.
All the industry except
that involved in making political attack ads, that is.
The only people still
benefiting from the process are the media, the politicians, and their backers.
All the power is, in fact,
transferred to the wealthy and their first act in power is to require a minimum
daily
per capita consumption of their political ads.
The citizens revolt,
evolve into apolitical slugs, and trudge off to live in the cool darkness of
the nearest non-operating factory.
Don't let this happen -
please take action. Vote for the person who will do the best job regardless of
the inane political attack ads. And let your politicians know that they should
get back to the business of governing and stop the business of fund-raising and
campaigning so early!
Wherever you are today,
I hope you have fewer political ads than we do here!
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