HALF?!? Did you say HALF?!?

Apropos of nothing other than our collective future: yesterday I heard a couple of startling numbers. 

I was catching up on listening to The NPR Politics Podcast and they ran an episode called “How Democratic is American Democracy?” and of course we all know that our system of government, designed 250 years ago by slave owners, is not quite effective at governing a nation that is now 50 states big and has 330 million people living in it.

On the podcast they broke down what the actual force and effect of that is in a couple of ways that maybe I had just never thought of before, here are the ones that really made me go, “Are you kidding me?” and skip back about 30 seconds:

• Half of the US population lives in 9 states.

• 70% of the population is represented by 30 Senators

• 30% of the population is represented by 70 Senators

• Given the population distribution in the US and the way that people tend to vote in geographic groups, the Republican Party represents acreage, not people.

We all knew that something like this was true, but I had simply never heard it broken down into such simple and stark numbers before. It is TERRIFYING. This is not the system that we believe it to be. This is not the system we learned about in school. I mean … it IS the same system, but it does not actually function the way that we were told it was supposed to.

The episode was really interesting and also discomforting and I would encourage anyone to go and listen to it:

How Democratic is-American Democracy?

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The Ethos of Dentists.

I recently got to see some of the mid-term political ads that are running in not-where-I-live (they don’t bother running many political ads in Southern California) and it’s funny because in the Freshman English class where I am almost-a-teacher we have been dealing with pathos, ethos, and logos. Ethos is always a tricky one to understand. It is basically an appeal to credibility, like: 4 out of 5 dentists agree that brushing your teeth is a good thing.

Political ads though seem to use a different form of this rhetorical appeal. Political ads are more like: 4 out of 5 dentists agree that the 5th dentist is an asshole.

The really fun ads are the ones that invoke President Obama as the 5th dentist. Below I have written a midterm ad that the RNC should feel free to use, because it is as good as everything else they are producing, but also because it demonstrates the inversion of ethos that seems to just be the norm now.

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Free RNC Ad Idea!

President Obama said that Hitler was bad ...

But look at this beautiful autobahn …

And all these happy children …

Why does Obama hate roads and happy children ...

This November, remember to vote Republican.

Because Hitler had some good ideas.

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