Distractions

By Kleinheider Posted on March 27, 2009 at 5:16 pm

Lean Left on how the people are kept from concentrating on the real issues:

But at the same time I have a sense that we are inundated, not so much with “whining” as just stupid distractions and idiotic disputes over things that don’t matter, or shouldn’t be controversial. In part this is politically strategic. The right wing is constantly and calculatedly ginning up “wedge issues” deliberately designed to prevent critical attention to their own failures and extremism: consciously empty scandals like Al Gore’s suits or John Edwards’ hair, and fraudulent or just insane controversies manipulated to divide the electorate, like gay marriage or the Terri Schiavo travesty. But to a large degree it’s just sheer stupidity run amok. The general public, liberals and conservatives, are just so thoughtless, so myopic, and so easily agitated, that the smallest, dumbest things can turn into social controversies.

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Tags: Al Gore, John Edwards, Terri Schiavo