Cowboy Confessional

It has been a long and slow devolution from the Federalist Papers to Monday Night Raw.

Upon occasion we have all have epiphanies that cause us to involuntarily slap our foreheads in failed attempts to distract ourselves from one source of pain with another.

Today I had a revelation for which repeatedly banging my skull into a brick wall has failed to provide masochistic equilibrium.

Last night, in a state of utter disbelief, I witnessed the intersection of surrealism that may portend the downfall of America. Osama bin Laden could not have devised a more fiendish way of eradicating American self respect, or of amplifying inanity to near-atomic destructive levels.

Our presidential candidates appeared and talked smack on a professional wrestling television program

Please, do not ponder that sentence for too long lest your bowls crawl up your esophagus and attempt to strange your brain as an act of self preservation.

Professional wrestling is to intellectual entertainment as McDonnald’s is to haute cuisine. There is no sin in detaching from realty for an hour or two, partaking of any escapist amusement. But it is impossible to cerebrally detach further than with wrastlin’. This industry has repeated the same basic scripts for the last century, and oddly the acting has not significantly improved through this repetition. Professional wrestling is a stylistically bereft soap opera for adolescent males and Budweiser soaked trailer park adults.

Politics isn’t any better.

The fact that these two outlets of substandard acting finally collided should surprise nobody. After all, the similarities are staggering. The scripts/speeches are utterly predictable. Black/white good/bad division are clearly defined with the announcers/media making them ever more pronounced. The actors are completely phony. The only meaningful differences are that wrestling has better choreography and costumes, and politics can lead to authentic mayhem.

When I caught wind that McCain, Clinton and Obama would make appearances on a wrestling telecast, I had an overwhelming urge to crack open a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels. That any potential future leader of the alleged free world might devolve to base pandering is to be expected. To become part of a production devoted to gratuitous fake violence and cheesecake honeys may be a sign of the Apocalypse. Now seeing that politicians are even worse actors than the wrestlers only goes to prove that they shouldn’t be trusted with changing the oil in your car much less a global economy or nuclear missiles.

Then it hit me.

Just when I was ready to write off this episode and proof of a declining nation, the long range scenario came painfully into view. Presidential candidates mimicking wrestlers was the culmination of cultivating the mindless voting block — the more easily duped drones with voter ID cards. Presidential rhetorical body slams are the political pitch for the new voting majority.

For years American politicians have been hyping the inane concept of getting more people to vote. They have not advocated making people more aware of issues. Nor are they pushing voter education on policy. Instead they sought to put voter registration cards in the hands of anyone with a pulse (or, in Chicago, anyone without a pulse). Motor-voter was the culmination of this insane objective, making voting easy for the lazy and brain numbed.

Like professional wrestling fans.

While witnessing Clinton mechanically mimic well known wrestler catch phrases from a teleprompter, it became self evident that the rush to enroll every adult as a voter had maniacal purpose. People who formerly were unmotivated to vote are easier to influence. This class of electors vote from emotion and are comfortable with making critical decisions based on little or no information or analysis, just as Congress does with the annual budget.

Elections have traditionally been won by turning out a “base” while convincing independent voters that you are the least criminal of the candidates. It is that latter group that has befuddled politicians. Independent voters are independent thinkers, and anyone who actively thinks about a politician’s promises does so through the cynical lens of reality. Politicos have blazed an easier path by farm-raising a group of voters who emotively adopt trivial messaging — like “change”, “hope” and “smack-down” — instead of well considered evaluation of issues, positions and the automatic rejection of candidates with documented or suspected drug use.

I fear they may have succeeded in recalibrating the voting populace. Indeed, if the outcome of this election (and perhaps the last two) have been decided by those who thrill over televised fraudulent assaults, then all future legislative misdeeds are possible.

Which may well be the end game, but there is hope. Anyone too lazy and disconnected to seek out a voter registration card may well be too lazy and disconnected to actually vote.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Culture, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.