Election 2017

3 entries. 2,595 words.

December, 2017

• The Duty of Citizenship. 2017-12-12 4:41 PM.
  • Politics
  • swampip.com
  
  I want to elaborate a little bit on a random tweet-thought I expressed this morning. …I think we are seeing recently that fame is actually more useful for changing the world than holding elected office My basic point was that it seems to me that popular, famous people are able to motivate the citizenry into action a lot more than any innate sense of civic duty. Recently (say, in the last 10-15 years, roughly the exact same time period of the rise of The Internet), I think we have seen a conflation of politics and popularity. What people remember about Obama is not his policies, but his likeableness. People presume he was a great president (especially now) because he was a cool guy with great comic timing, while completely forgetting that he authorized the bombing of hundreds of civilians with military drones. 767 words.
• Live Blog: Alabama Election Results. 2017-12-13 12:05 AM.
  • Politics
  • swampip.com
  
  I’m going to write about election results from The Big Alabama Election. I’m starting about 7 PM EST, which is about an hour before the polls close. Just for the record, I don’t live in Alabama so technically this election is none of my business. But it’s the only election tonight so it’s getting a lot of national coverage. It’s like a Monday Night Football game… it’s the only one on. 1,412 words.
• Post-Election Blues. 2017-12-13 5:40 AM.
  • Politics
  • swampip.com
  
  I drank too much hot chocolate tonight, so I can’t sleep. Therefore I’ll add a few post-election thoughts. Even though it’s none of my business what Alabamians do with their Senate seats, I was relieved to see that Doug Jones won, because it’s really disheartening to think that an accused pedophile could still win a seat in the Senate. If a story about feeling up 14-year-old girls comes out a few days before an election in The Enquirer, it makes sense to be suspicious about it. But this story came out months before the election in The Washington Post. It’s disheartening to think that we live in a culture where an accused pedophile can simply call a Washington Post story fabricated out of whole cloth and get away with it. 416 words.