{"id":552,"date":"2010-04-23T08:50:56","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T15:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=552"},"modified":"2010-04-23T08:50:56","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T15:50:56","slug":"frustration-gobbledygook-and-the-state-of-polity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=552","title":{"rendered":"Frustration, gobbledygook and the state of polity"},"content":{"rendered":"

People are pissed.<\/p>\n

At government, that is.<\/p>\n

A bit crudely put, but that’s the latest from Andy Kohut and the folks at Pew Research.\u00a0 According to the USAToday <\/strong><\/a>story, some 56% of us are frustrated.\u00a0 About one in five were just plain mad.<\/p>\n

Pew called it the highest anger-and-disgust level in a half-century of polling. It is due at least partially to the cumulative effect of political and institutional failure writ large. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Think of a whole nation of Howard Beale<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"blah\"I’ve got a theory on why.\u00a0 No, it is not the economy.\u00a0 Stock market is up.\u00a0 Unemployment is high but below double digits.\u00a0 Hey, I’m not saying it is great out there but we seem to be muddling through.\u00a0 Don’t think it is societal.\u00a0 Lots of electronic toys, lattes, and other ‘necessities’ out there that people seem to be still enjoying.<\/p>\n

I think the reason is a plethora of gobbledygook and a dearth of coherence.<\/p>\n

We’ve always had gobbledygook.\u00a0 It flourishes in both the private and public sectors.<\/p>\n

But we’re aflood with it today.\u00a0 It is everywhere.\u00a0 And with all the blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, and God knows what social media activity going on … it is a virtual tsunami of gobbledygook.<\/p>\n

With that has come a loss of coherence.\u00a0 Coherence is as rare as liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.\u00a0 People say and do things that simple don’t correspond to any framework of real world experience.<\/p>\n

Case in point – Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell’s recent prescription for the Democrats on how to avoid defeat at the polls in November 2010.\u00a0 The article, “How the Democrats can avoid a November bloodbath<\/a><\/strong>,” is the latest in their attack on the Obama administration’s strategy on health care reform.\u00a0 Being pollsters, they rest much of their case on surveys.\u00a0 It’s ok.\u00a0 Not terribly compelling or deep.\u00a0 But ok.\u00a0 But when they get to the punchline, the whole thing begins to get whacky.\u00a0 Their prescription for winning in November?\u00a0 Here ya go …<\/p>\n

Winning over swing voters will require a bold, new focus from the president and his party. They must adopt an agenda aimed at reducing the debt, with an emphasis on tax cuts, while implementing carefully crafted initiatives to stimulate and encourage job creation.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes that is right.\u00a0 To win in November we need to (a) reduce the deficit; AND (b) reduce taxes; AND (c) have a jobs program.<\/p>\n

Sorta like telling someone deep in debt that they need to pay off their loans while taking a pay cut and buying (on credit) a shiny new hybrid.<\/p>\n

Or telling a drunk that the way to sober up is to reduce your beer intake, increase your wine consumption, and buy a liquor store.<\/p>\n

This, of course, is our problem in a nutshell — the idea that we can do three things that are IMPOSSIBLE to do simultaneously.\u00a0\u00a0 Then when we actually follow the gobbledygook we find that it doesn’t work.\u00a0 So we gravitate to more … gobbledygook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People are pissed. At government, that is. A bit crudely put, but that’s the latest from Andy Kohut and the folks at Pew Research.\u00a0 According to the USAToday story, some 56% of us are frustrated.\u00a0 About one in five were just plain mad. Pew called it the highest anger-and-disgust level in a half-century of polling.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}