Monday, November 07, 2022

That shining light upon a hill is a celebrity's smile!

In China, Xi Jinping got himself a third term as the country's leader.  I made fun of him and more:

I could tweet with such sarcasm because I live in a relatively democratic country where I am able to express my thoughts to an extent.

(Note that I did not refer to the US as a free country where I can freely express my thoughts.)

Unlike in China, in the US, we do not allow a President to be in office for more than two terms.  Nor is there a possibility for what Putin did in Russia.  He was the president, and then he was the prime minister when a toady of his--Medvedev--was the president, and then returned to the presidency, as if to show how he faithfully follows the law of the land.

We even have a process to select the people that we want to contest in the elections, with the winners then making governing decisions on our collective behalf.  In theory, anybody can become the President, or a Senator, or a city councilmember, as long as they meet the constitutional minimum requirements for that office.

In theory, the contest between the competing candidates promotes a qualified candidate to work as a leader.

That is in theory.

In practice, we have often devolved into tapping celebrities.

When Jesse "The Body" Ventura became the governor of Minnesota without any real political experience, I was concerned that there was something wrong.  Not long after that, voters in California preferred to recall an elected governor and then conducted a free-for-all gubernatorial election.  Allow me to remind you about that political circus of 2003:

The spectacle — a snap election featuring a color wheel of 135 candidates, including a former child actor, a porn star and a handful of professional politicians — shook California from its usual political slumber and captivated an audience that watched from around the world.

Thankfully, the porn star candidate did not win.  The winner was, perhaps you know him well, Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Blogging means that I can use my own words, right?  This is what I wrote about Arnold Schwarzenegger:

What had he ever done in politics?  Nothing as an elected official. Nothing as any kind of a cabinet officer.  Nothing as a member of a regulatory body.  Schwarzenegger was a political nobody.  And he won the election.  He won as a Republican in a state where the demographics were rapidly shifting in favor of Democrats.  His celebrity status carried the day.

His qualification was that he was a celebrity.

Schwarzenegger was such a popular candidate that even the wealthy Warren Buffett served as an unpaid advisor to him!

I always worry about crappy political developments in California.  Because, often those reverberate throughout the country within a matter of time.  Beating up on "illegals" was a winning strategy for Pete Wilson, and soon the GOP made it a part of their national strategy.  People even voted to dismantle affirmative action and now we are looking at the Supreme Court possibly making affirmative action unconstitutional.  

Schwarzenegger as a celebrity candidate gave us tRump as a Celebrity Apprentice President.

In turn, tRump has sponsored a number of other celebrities to high offices.  We could soon see his handiwork in Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker as senators.  In the Senate, they will join Tommy Tuberville, whose claim to celebrity was through college football--he was a big time coach in a part of the country where the sport is even bigger than Jesus.  Kari Lake could become the governor of Arizona.  All these are people with little to nothing in terms of political experience.  They are celebrities and apparently that is enough for voters.

I had hoped that celebrities getting elected was a thing of my past.  In Tamil Nadu, I witnessed the election of a movie star as the chief minister of the state.  That disease quickly spread to the neighboring states as well, and a Telugu movie superstar became the chief minister in Andhra Pradesh.  Cricket players and movie stars got elected to the federal Parliament.  They were celebrities and that was enough for voters.

Oh, the man that Schwarzenegger replaced as the governor?  Gray Davis was a well educated man, with an undergrad from Stanford and a law degree from Columbia.  He served in Vietnam, during some of the intense conflict years, and returned as a decorated veteran.  Davis, like John Kerry and John McCain, turned to politics after the Vietnam experience and served the people of California in various capacities.  And then was elected as governor.

And today, I read in the news that at a campaign event, Kari Lake asked the McCain Republicans to leave:

Meanwhile, the Tesla car guy who now owns Twitter threatens that accounts could be suspended even for parody.  In response, I changed my Twitter name a la "I'm Spartacus."

Vote and weep for the fate of democracy!

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