Recently by Simon Black: Why I'm Betting on People Who Will KickAss and Take Names
Did you know that the word ‘idiot’ is actually derived from the origins of democracy in ancient Greece? Thousands of years ago, a Greek citizen who demonstrated disinterest in politics was labeled ‘idiotes’; it literally meant ‘private person,’ which curiously enough was a term of derision at the time.
Fast forward to the pitiful excuse we have for a democratic process in the world today, and the opposite is now true: you have to be a complete idiot to invest yourself in these politics.
Saturday’s straw poll in Ames, Iowa is a perfect example. A few thousand people voted for their preferred republican presidential candidate, and mainstream media outlets have been talking about it nonstop. There are a lot of things wrong with this system –
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First, why should anyone care what a few thousand people in a single town think? Do the whims of 17,000 people really have any bearing on a country of 310 million? In modern democracy, they do.
Michelle Bachmann won the poll. Granted, she won by bribing her voters with a free Randy Travis concert, but such things don’t matter in modern democracy. In the eyes of the media, she is now the front-runner having garnered a whopping 28.6% of the 17,000 people who voted.
The same logic, however, does not apply to the guy who came in second… if you can even find his name anywhere in print. You see, there’s this lowly fellow from Texas by the name of Ron Paul who scored 4,671 votes, just 152 shy of Bachmann.
Yet while the media is heralding Bachmann’s victory as a major success for her campaign, there has hardly been an utterance of Ron Paul’s strong finish on Bachmann’s heels.
The third place finisher, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, was so dismayed by his results that he withdrew from the race after securing only 13.7% of the votes.
It’s incredible that the fickle whims of tiny Iowa mob could be regarded as so influential that the first place finisher would be anointed, and the third place finisher withdraw in disgrace… and yet the exact same results are to be completely ignored when applied to the second place finisher.
