water cooler talk
I think that presidential approval ratings might be just something to talk about, something that places the news centrally in the relationship between the government and the people, and with politics being ever more heated by the year (creepy), it's not likely to change for the less obnoxious in my lifetime. Presidential approval ratings is where people learn what other people think, and it is the bandwagon strategy of opinion-shaping in action. If people heard the president had high approval numbers I honestly think it would make them like him more. Public opinion in general is fairly kaleidoscopic, and quite fickle. By kaliedoscopic I refer to the colors that are all copies of one another; the variety is illusory.Other "water cooler talk" that has to do with politics (it's either them or celebrities, in both cases the media makes itself absolutely essential) is usually about morality, and in this administration, it's ALWAYS about how Christianity and Christian values are under attack.
Read carefully:
Christianity is not under attack in this country. It might be under attack at this blog, but when a person is more likely to be a Christian beating people up than being beaten up for being a Christian, you can't have it both ways and say you're being persecuted. If there was one person on the face of the earth who wasn't a confessed Christian who was washed in the blood or whatever, still Christians would claim to be oppressed by this one person. They would call him on the phone and send people to convert him and when he ran away into the woods, they'd send people in after him and build him a house made of bibles.
I'm talking about the "war on Christmas" which is painfully obviously another think-tank invention intended to rally the base. Again. Never has a base enjoyed rallying as much as this one. Well, maybe once. Guess when.
This is patriotism applied to Christmas. The experience of Christmas is actually being branded by the right wing here. It's being turned into another opportunity to defend what you hold dear, and "let us help you define what that is." What was once a calm and peaceful holiday of sharing and togetherness is fair game in our easily tilted, mediated world, to be revved into the only approved mood, superduperwar, all the time in high definition. War on Christmas. Please. Christmas is only in danger of being ruined by cramming it down everybody's throat.
This is one step from saying that someone celebrating another religion is at War on Christianty. Maybe half a step.
The only Christian value being sold back to the American people is this: being under attack. It's the same product no matter how you wrap it up, keep people afraid and angry and reacting. And if you actually think there's a war on Christmas, they've done it to you, too.
The thing is, it's all bullshit anyway, because there are real laws being passed every day that drive the country deeper into debt through tax cuts that ALWAYS favor the rich, even as we fight a war that (even as major combat operations ended a couple hundred billion dollars ago, on "mission accomplished" day) is costing no end of money. That REAL information affects water cooler talk very little. But a war on Christmas gets 'em fired up. Knees across the fruited plain twich and jaws set hard, and people climb into their cars and trucks ready to defend Christmas from whoever the bad guys are.
What a drag. What a travesty.
News Hounds: Who's Really Behind the War on Christmas?
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