I understood the humor in that thread. I didn't think it was funny. I know what's funny and what isn't. Some jokes just aren't funny. Humor isn't 100 percent subjective.
Lobbying isn't against the law. Nor is it unethical. One can lobby without using bribery and blackmail. Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine any politician voting in favor of outlawing it.
One could make a list of the costs of a campaign, then break it down one by one. First, there's TV costs. Make the TV networks pay for politics. Like a public service announcement. Prevent campaigns from being about who can afford to run the most commercials. Make networks pay for debates. Networks and advertisers will fight these ideas. So I don't know how they would be accomplished. That's why I call them ideas. Second, reduce the length of the campaign. Again, I don't know how you could enforce this. But the shorter the campaign, the lower the cost. The longer the campaign, the higher the cost. If there's a will, there's a way. But there is rarely enough will to do the right thing. That's the real tragedy of the time we live in: absence of character.
I won't entertain comments about Nazis. There are no Nazis in America today. Not really. That word ought to have been buried with the 1940s. To use it in today's context makes no sense. It has no place in today's debates. I know, it's an exaggeration. I get it. But at a certain age we should stop exaggerating. No one benefits from inflated rhetoric of the sort you see all the time in newspapers, TV, radio, and the internet. Let's save figurative language for fiction, poetry, and drama, perhaps the occasional rhapsodic correspondence. Everyone else ought to be as literal as impossible. Maybe then people will stop misusing the word "literally". We will start to speak literally more than figuratively. We will stop exaggerating and begin to grow up.
I see everyone talking about a "trade war". It's not a war. Is it? No one's getting shot. There are no battlefields or troops. So it's not a war. People who call it a war don't have the truth as their primary aim. Does it matter what words we use? It certainly does. Ever been in court?
Being wealthy is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.
In politics, as I said, the independently wealthy are more likely to do the right thing because they can't be bought. They are less likely to be bribed. They don't need the money. I would much rather people be motivated by wealth than by power. I agree with Henry Adams. Power is poison.
