Re: Is this sci.physics, or by accident, am I reading posts on some crackpt political nesgroup.

hhc314@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jul 8, 12:52 pm, Fred Kasner <fkas...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
hhc...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

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Fred, I will not even attempt to dipute anything that you have said it
this post.
I do have major fault to pick with the both leaders of our two major
political parties that have permitted this travesty to take place.
Feel free to consider me an 'old fart' Fred, but I rather like the way
that the presidential candidates emerged from some consensus at the
respective party conventions, where media created images played nearly
no role in candidate selections, and certainly not the heavily
incluence primary elections, because I don't remember these
distractions even existing.
I was pretty young at that time, but as I remember watching it on
black and white TV, nearly every state went in to the convention
promoting their 'favorite son' candidate. Sometimes even 20-50 votes
took place before a candidate was selected. This was because, in those
days, the US operated as a Republic, not a Democracy.
The system managed to works quite well, although it was sometime
lengthy. Great leaders like FDR and Lincoln emerged as their party
nominees.
Fred, I have to ask you this sensitive quetion. Would you see any
chance that a man like FDR in the face of a hard core media blitz
could emergy the winner in one of today's primary fights. Or, for
that matter, Harry Truman as his vice presidential nominee?
Not damn likely, but these to arugably the greatest presidents that
the US had during the 20th Century.
I give Reagan a great deal of credit, but I do remember that the night
he nominated George Bush to be his vice-president, I do remember Black
and White TV images of the press going to the door of Bush's hotel
suite and waking him up to get an interview. After repeated poundings
on his hotel room door, Bush finally emerged in a nightrobe, and after
a few brief comments told the press and media to 'get lost' and went
back to bed.
Older readers remember this. For me, while Reagon in my mind ended the
Cold War, and I really like his style of management (Right, thank you
Nancy, bet you didn't realize that anyone noticed), I have alway
considered Reagans selection of a running mate to have been rather
poor.
Again, older readers know exactly what I mean, and why. Since those
years, things have turned somewhat downhill. We seem desperately to be
attempting to convert a country founded as a Republic into a Popular
Democracy. This is a damn dumb move, although it sound just great.
The fact is they thoughout recorded history every Democracy in history
has failed due to the same reason.
Fred Kastner may may or may not like me for saying this, but the
falacy of Democracy is that it places ultimate value on one person
equalling one vote. Think about this a little, and it reveals what
this leads to. Note that a truly democrative election place nothing on
the education of the voter, his I.Q, or if he/she even understand what
the issues are.
That's the current problem with the primary elections. Where a
football hero to run for election, with sufficient finanancial
backing, whe could become a presidential candidate.
Ok' I've ranted on enough on this topic. Unless things change on the
presidential slate, this is why I will not vote in the upcoming
election, or vot with a "write in" for none of the above. I
personally view both of the leading presidental candidate is being
equally bad for the US, although in different ways.
Generally I have almost nothing to quarrel with you about the above. It
is interesting to note that the New England states worked as Democracies
quite well while the other states worked as Republics quite well even if
the requirement of property ownership was a problem for those who did
not want to move to the frontier to acquire property. Nevertheless even
the New Englanders approved the Republican form of government for the
new USA. And it has survived in the operation at the state level as well
for all 50 states. Of course the sheer numbers of our population have
required the indirect voting process in all save small town local
elections quite well enough. However it also leads to difficulty at
times of ridding ouselves of corrupt officials who earn votes through
favors to voters and their friends and families.

The best example of limitations of democracy is the states that run
their primaries via the caucus procedure. It is too easy to be swayed
into voting for a fine orator and handsome appearance. But another
example is the frequency with which California has elected actors with
no political savvy as governor or senator. The exposure and the faint
sense that the roles they play are the real person leads to ridiculous
election results. The democrats started it with Helen Gahagan Douglas
and the Republicans followed suit with the song and dance man George
Murphy, the not particularly good leading man Ronald Reagan, and then
the poor actor action hero present governor. Tennessee elected a TV
personality as senator but he went back to TV and then tried politics
once again. Good acting some times leads to election (Huey Long) but it
requires some savvy to stay there (Reagan).

As far as the elder Bush is concerned, on paper he seemed one of the
best qualified presidential candidates in a very long time. What we
missed is that he had almost zero leadership skills and little sense at
reading the public will. His son was about the most stupid president we
have had within memory of people such as me. Although Nixon was a vile
person he really was quite clever and in many ways was a good president.

I will vote for what I consider the lesser of two evils in the election.
I don't see the freshman senator as qualified but I fear terribly an
overwhelming reactionary Supreme Court. So I will vote for the Democrat
with grave misgivings. However as he has my state locked up I could
really vote for Mickey Mouse for all my vote is needed to get a
non-reactionary in the White House.

Awful administrations can come from those who seemed to be a good choice
(Grant and Harding) or those who seemed to be not qualified (TR and
HST). But one cannot really ignore how important the Supreme Court is.
Andrew Jackson put a reactionary and racist fool, Taney, in as Chief
Justice and we paid the price of a civil war because cool heads could
not prevail.) I fear for the Republic wasting is resources of material
and citizen vitality if we follow some ridiculous courses that
reactionary justices would have us follow. Nevertheless, Harry, do vote.
And find someone who is a rational conservative to write in. Or hope
that some miracle occurs during the convention and a good candidate we
can trust appears from one party or both.
FK- Hide quoted text -

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Fred, thanks for a great post. Your words may give readers pause, and
I view that as a good thing.

You know that I am a very conservative Republican, but oddly enough,
other than FDR, the presidents that I admired the most were Harry S.
Truman, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Rather than commenting on
who the next candiates will be, I prefer to wait for the outcome of
the conventions where cooler and more experienced heads might
prevail.

I note in passing that the United States is a Republic, and not a
Democracy, thank God!

Harry C,


Harry, as a resident of New England you are probably aware that not all of the USA is a republic. There are still municipalities that are direct democracies. It is the federal government that is republican as are all of the state governments. The problem is that we are too large in numbers to vote as a democracy. However when the day comes when we are all equipped with computers we may revert to a true democracy. That will mean huge numbers of people swayed by propaganda to vote in ways that are totally insane.
FK
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