Newcastle — Why is it that politicians are always shouting?  Are they so out of touch that they are unfamiliar with voice amplifying electronics?  As I recall from my youth, the boys who were loudest were also the dumbest.  Is there a parallel here?  Are these people loud because they think that volume will make up for the absence of substance?  I think so.  What I find especially noisome (pun intended) are women politicians who yell.  I’m sorry girls, you just don’t shout very well.  This is one of the very few areas where men outperform you, so give it up.

Our two leading presidential candidates are both guilty.  I’m astonished that their vocal chords are still functional (and rather wish they weren’t).  These gentlemen both seem like rational, intelligent humans; why are they screaming?  Maybe it’s because they know that nobody is paying attention; and nobody is.  What’s especially depressing is that what they’re shouting about isn’t even their own ideas or beliefs.  They are mouthpieces of campaign committees under the thumbs of political action committees.  Let’s just get this election over with so that one or the other can preside over our dysfunctional government for a few more painful years.

Did you know that politics used to be an honorable profession?  That’s a staggering thought isn’t it?  Back in the good old days when this country was young and vigorous, politicians volunteered time away from their regular jobs to worry the affairs of state.  It is further said that they tried to represent the people and not the lobbyists.

It must be admitted that the country was simpler at inception with only thirteen colonies to squabble amongst one another.  But then states were added and the congress got bigger and bigger until..Whoa!  The House of Representatives was capped at 435 in 1911.  The constitution allows for one representative for as few as 30,000 people.  If we stayed with that ratio we’d be looking today at a House membership of about 8500.  Wow!  8500 Representatives, all shouting.  That would fill a lot of hours on C-SPAN.

A senator is, obviously, less representative.  Personally I don’t agree with the decision made in the Seventeenth Amendment to have senators chosen by direct election rather than appointed by state government.  But I don’t particularly like the previous appointment practice either.  I think the British got it right with their House of Lords, and I am sorry to see that they are increasingly getting away from the hereditary appointment.  These people are educated and can vote their beliefs, no re-election blather.  Certainly one can argue that the Lords don’t represent a cross section of the electorate, but is that bad?

It is patently clear to all and sundry that the government of this country doesn’t work.  It spends more money than it makes; it vaults into wars it never wins; and it has proven helpless in the face of our current recession with massive unemployment.  Once we had a “Know Nothing” party.  Now we have two-shouting at each other.

I have no doubt that our current problems were created by technology.  On the subject of jobs, there are too many machines doing the work that hands used to accomplish.  More significantly, however, the explosion in “communication”, from the telegraph to Twitter, has reduced most of us to blithering, opinionated idiots.

I am so tired of the hackneyed call for better education.  What we really need is less education.  Education doesn’t teach people to think; it teaches them to think they can think; and then they drown in “information.”  Humbug!

I am equally tired of promises to “create jobs.”  The only thing we create is some amorphous fiction known as money.  And that’s not so bad, because eventually all those dollars will cause a tsunami of inflation which will engulf all debts and all savings.  Then we can move on to a nice anarchical society and a better country.

You’re right.  Nobody is forced to turn on the TV or the Computer, much less pay attention.  But we’re herd animals and we do what everyone else does.  I’d like to be a monk, but it’s difficult.  So shout on, me hearties.  And the good news is that all that hot air won’t have much more effect on the inevitable global warming than, say, a small coal-fired power plant.