the White House. The celebrity culture is now on steroids these days with social media. For many people that dislike the thought of discussing politics - whether it is because of the actual effort required in order to understand the issues or simply because it can tend to seem hopeless or induce anger.
They are quite happy to listen to a TV or social media influencer. Very little effort required and the topics of fear and anger are voiced by someone other than themselves. So they can agree or just turn the channel/stream until they hear something they like.
But the result is not a good one. We end up with people like Trump at the federal level or Ted Cruz in a State like mine - Texas. It is the thing these days. Notice we have 535 people in Congress but only a small percentage of them are outspoken and constantly in the headlines - the rest are quite content to get reelected year after year with little or no effort because of the way we gerrymander..
A good example here are home is Matthew McConaughey here in Austin. I really like his movies, I liked his "bad boy" image of sitting in his house as a young man smoking a doobie and playing the bongos - but for the last few years he has dipped into the idea of politics. Nothing wrong with that....but will never say if he is running against the Texas status quo (Perry, Abbott). Why? well maybe not to alienate some of his media fans, etc. or be a just to be different? But the bottom line for me is this----is he just another celeb that is using his platform - movie star, Longhorn promoter, favorite son to get elected and not willing to speak out about what he believes? No sure but a good example of the reality/social media world in which we now live.
My intent is not to focus on McConaughey, because I honestly like him. Just using him as an example that comes to mind.
We need serious people to run our government more than ever these days. The last 50 years since Reagan has not served us well at all, and I worry about the future of this nation and our children.
= new reply since forum marked as read