Political Theatre category archive

At the Portland Press-Herald, Victoria Hugo-Vidal muses on mistrust of government, then echoes the famous line uttered by Walt Kelly’s Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

A snippet:

If government is our problem, it just means that we are our problem. People are the problem. Which means unless we are invaded and taken over by alien overlords (would that surprise any of you at this point?), people are going to have to be the solution.

The idea that government is a bad, scary, untouchable thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some persons seem to think that limiting the terms of elected officials will somehow fix things. (Indeed, my local rag has had several such letters in the past week.)

I doubt it.

Persons who vote for one fool will quite happily vote for the next fool.

A better solution is not to vote for fools, not to live in a bubble, not to tell yourself that there’s no differences between candidates or parties when there quite plainly is, to see through lies, to separate reason from emotion–oh, well, you know enough to add to the list.

Yet, in a longer post about the foolishness of the term limits myth, Atrios makes a point that I have not seen articulated previously mentioned before:

. . . term limited lawmakers have one eye on their next career from the moment they get into office. The balance between “pleasing voters” and “pleasing the people who might hire you” gets worse every day until their time is up.

Dick Polman.

No summary or excerpt will do his piece justice.

Just go read it.

Mangy points out that one thing is not like the other thing.

At the Hartford Courant, Thomas Congelolsi argues that the Republican Party behaves like a toddler in a tantrum.

Methinks he makes a pretty good case.

Via Juanita Jean.

A President who believes he must obey the law, even when he doesn’t agree with it.

Tyler Cowen argues that we’re looking at the problem of proliferating mis- and disinformation from the wrong perspective. A snippet (emphasis added):

Speaking in economic terms, the problem with misinformation is demand, not supply

Check out his reasoning. Methinks he makes a persuasive case.

David talks with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about electric vehicles, public transit, and related issues.

Farron unslights the slight of hand.

Retired psychology and business professor Dale Hartley looks at the differences between psychopaths and manipulators (he uses the term “Machiavellians”). Here’s one that he notes.

Con artists, financial fraudsters, romance scammers, and other schemers may be psychopaths or narcissists—or not. They may or may not meet the criteria for any number of personality disorders. We can’t know that, and ultimately it’s none of our business. But neither their psychopathy, nor their narcissism, nor any personality disorder can deceive, manipulate, and exploit us—only when they deploy Machiavellian tactics can they do that. Psychopaths might gain our compliance via threats or force, but when they do it with honeyed words, they’re falling back on Machiavellianism (which you can recognize if you know what to look for).

Follow the link and see if the characteristics he describes remind you of anyone in the news–or, for that matter, anyone who appears on Fox News or any of its clones and imitators.