Obama supporters are the real cynics [View All]

[Indenturedebtor]

As my wife and I shared our mutual gripes about work tonight, I realised that we were the real cynics. See she works for the Genomics department at a major university. Recently she was told to bring more graduate students into the program. She came up with a multilevel marketing plan that focused primarily on what would excite the target audience of college students: money, sunny weather (Arizona), altruism, etc.

He was strongly taken aback, and simply insisted that the best way to bring good students into the program was to focus on "the science" and insisted on some rediculously boring spiel about "blah blah blahmasine hydrapodiblah mutualy blah'd with a blah blah blah blahdiphase" which is exactly what they'd always done in the past.

After a few weeks of arguing with him about the nature of college students she finally got her way when he went out of town and the deadlines for the ad came up.

Shockingly when her ad campaign results were in they had almost twice the number of applicants as in any year in the programs' history.

----------------

Ok point-

Her boss, a brilliant and wildly successful man would like to believe that his priorities are the only and the best priorities in life. Science for the sake of science is the noblest pursuit, and people who are able and intelligent will naturally appreciate the beauty and perfection of good hard science. What an exciting challenge... what a wonderful and fulfilling existence it will be to immerse myself in the wonderful world of blah blah blah blahsine hyrdoxilase blah blah.

Right. It would be lovely if everyone cared about wonk the way that we do. It would be such a wonderful country if everyone carefully considered history, statistics, policy, etc when chosing a candidate.

But they don't and they never will. People are finnicky, panicky, distracted, ignorant, lazy yutz's who can barely manage to drag themselves to work everyday much less summon the emotional and intellectual wherewithal to even care about politics, much less devote the time and energy it takes to research the issues! Who's who? What's what? Who cares? I have bills to pay and kids to feed. Oh it's the Gays you say that make my life so hard? Ok sure... I hate them. Who's against Gays this year? Oh well it's my duty to vote I'll vote for that guy.

The best that we can hope for is someone that charms them to our side and then gets them motivated to PAY ATTENTION, and further gets them on our side and believing in the solutions that we believe in.

Hell I'm so excited about a Dem that can even get them to pay attention for a moment, the fact that he has some great policy ideas has me all atwitter.


Clinton people I understand that you wish everyone was a policy wonk. What a wonderful country it would be if we all truly took advantage of our democracy and kept one eye on "what's going down on the hill" every single minute of every single day. But this will NEVER happen. That is your fatal hope, your lack of healthy cynicism.

Now I certainly don't believe that wonk for wonk and virtue for virtue Obama and Clinton are equal. I didn't make my choice on charisma alone. But dammit if Obama wins you should be damn happy that he's on our side! Bush didn't win on issues.. He won because of nasty tactics and his ability to charm the country in his own wierd way.

Charisma is a power... it can be used for good or evil. But dammit we have a chance at POWER and you should be happy about it. For once in a generation the Dems have a chance at winning the heart and the will of the nation and we need to take advantage of that. The trouble is that someone without any ethics will always have the advantage in the realm of charisma. Just tell them what they want to hear and then do whatever.

There is always a danger of tyranny no matter who gets elected. But for all his imperfections and indiscretions, he does have a good record and has done alot for ethics and transparency. If he wins the Nom, please help us make sure that we sweep him into office on a mandate so that his power of charisma can have its true force to make his policies (that we all 90% agree with) a reality!