There are many tedious rituals in 'murka's interminable campaign process, but one of the worst is this weird insistence that some inbred shithead small state possesses some sort of intrinsic wisdom that us city slickers (I say this from a town in California that has fewer than 8,000 inhabitants, in a county with fewer than 30,000 people, and not even a movie theater) jest cain't reckon.
People who classify themselves as "traditionalists" tend to hew to the idea that just because something has been done in a certain way for a certain amount of time, it should continue to be that way. Slavery was one such tradition; subjugating women was another. I wouldn't say that having states like Iowa and New Hampshire have first call at anointing national politicians is as ethically abhorrent as those things, but it is certainly at least as counter-productive.
This is a no-win situation for those states, quite frankly. There are only two lines of defense -- Iowa's miserable track record at picking eventual nominees either makes the process a harmless, anodyne event, or it renders its considered collective opinion completely useless. So why not just set up a rotating schedule throughout all states, large and small?
While most of us may not have traveled around the world, visiting every country and culture, I would guess that most of us have traveled at least some. I wouldn't say I'm well-traveled by any means, but I've been through half of the U.S., half of Europe, and parts of Canada and Mexico -- enough to know, like most people who have traveled far more also know, that once you get past the cultural bullshit, people are basically people. They mostly want the same things: a decent living for themselves, a future for their families, a community that provides opportunities for prosperity, freedom to live their lives more or less how they please.
There is nothing special about a small rural state, nor a large urban city. Again, the individuals in both of those locales want essentially the same things out of life, even if they self-actualize those desires differently. The only real, measurable socioeconomic differences mostly have to do with the levels of education, which in turn center around people with degrees leaving for the cities, where the money is.
Many people in rural communities are simply stuck there in lives of inertia and clutter, but there are also some very intelligent people in those areas. Unfortunately, most of those smart folks are retirees who moved out to the sticks to save a buck and get away from the crime and assholes. So they can help and skew the IQ curve, but not much and not for long.
The point is that, despite our cultural reverse pretensions, there is nothing particularly special about these areas at all. It is merely a fiction perpetrated by the corporate media, as part of their endless PR arm to simultaneously guilt-trip white urban liberals, and falsely empower aggrieved rural conservatives, who apparently are unable to count, or they would have noticed by now that no one with any real brains or ambition wants to live in Cooter's fucking Gulch anymore.
It doesn't matter that Iowa Republitards are jacking off to Ben Carson this week, when they were spanking it to Trump a month ago, and Michelle Bachmann a few years ago. They should know by now, just by the empirically verifiable and consistent results, that no one gives a red-hot monkey-fuck what they think. But for some reason we persist with this odd fiction that Iowans "should" continue to have first opportunity to kick the tires on potential leaders.
People who classify themselves as "traditionalists" tend to hew to the idea that just because something has been done in a certain way for a certain amount of time, it should continue to be that way. Slavery was one such tradition; subjugating women was another. I wouldn't say that having states like Iowa and New Hampshire have first call at anointing national politicians is as ethically abhorrent as those things, but it is certainly at least as counter-productive.
This is a no-win situation for those states, quite frankly. There are only two lines of defense -- Iowa's miserable track record at picking eventual nominees either makes the process a harmless, anodyne event, or it renders its considered collective opinion completely useless. So why not just set up a rotating schedule throughout all states, large and small?
While most of us may not have traveled around the world, visiting every country and culture, I would guess that most of us have traveled at least some. I wouldn't say I'm well-traveled by any means, but I've been through half of the U.S., half of Europe, and parts of Canada and Mexico -- enough to know, like most people who have traveled far more also know, that once you get past the cultural bullshit, people are basically people. They mostly want the same things: a decent living for themselves, a future for their families, a community that provides opportunities for prosperity, freedom to live their lives more or less how they please.
There is nothing special about a small rural state, nor a large urban city. Again, the individuals in both of those locales want essentially the same things out of life, even if they self-actualize those desires differently. The only real, measurable socioeconomic differences mostly have to do with the levels of education, which in turn center around people with degrees leaving for the cities, where the money is.
Many people in rural communities are simply stuck there in lives of inertia and clutter, but there are also some very intelligent people in those areas. Unfortunately, most of those smart folks are retirees who moved out to the sticks to save a buck and get away from the crime and assholes. So they can help and skew the IQ curve, but not much and not for long.
The point is that, despite our cultural reverse pretensions, there is nothing particularly special about these areas at all. It is merely a fiction perpetrated by the corporate media, as part of their endless PR arm to simultaneously guilt-trip white urban liberals, and falsely empower aggrieved rural conservatives, who apparently are unable to count, or they would have noticed by now that no one with any real brains or ambition wants to live in Cooter's fucking Gulch anymore.
It doesn't matter that Iowa Republitards are jacking off to Ben Carson this week, when they were spanking it to Trump a month ago, and Michelle Bachmann a few years ago. They should know by now, just by the empirically verifiable and consistent results, that no one gives a red-hot monkey-fuck what they think. But for some reason we persist with this odd fiction that Iowans "should" continue to have first opportunity to kick the tires on potential leaders.
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