projections

This will be a short blog. I am exhausted. I have several projects that are requiring me to write on the fly for upwards of 10 hours a day and I am just burnt right now. I do have an ever growing list of topics I want to blog about, as soon as I pass the milestone tomorrow I can switch back to blogging in the morning.

I have been watching the primary feeds and it was just…frustrating to see the media releasing their projections before even a third of the districts had reported. Almost as disheartening as seeing the polling results and witnessing how many people were voting for candidates who had already bowed out of the race.

Back in the 80s there was a lot of noise made about how media projections, especially the ones made this early, have a direct impact on the outcome of the vote. There was talk about legislation being passed to block the media from reporting on the returns – mind you they could report the numbers but they were to be prohibited from editorializing on them. Needless to say that movement absolutely died out.

I wish that there was a movement to bring it back.  My god, our electoral process is so screwed up.

And the people voting for candidates who have withdrawn or write-ins for people who don’t even exist, what on Earth do they think they are accomplishing? That is not a protest, that is the height of apathy. That is even more of an abdication of responsibility than not voting at all.

No small wonder that I picked Erich Fromm’s work on “The Illusion of Individuality” to read tomorrow on Essay. It is from his book “Escape from Freedom.” The central idea of the book is that “if humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism…If the rise of democracy set some people free, at the same time it gave birth to a society in which the individual feels alienated and dehumanized.”

Tomorrow, 10pm EST on http://blogtalkradio.com/grace-independent. If you can’t listen live, go to the link later and listen to the archived recording.

Ugh…alright…I need sleep.

c.2012. Cassandra Tribe. All Rights Reserved.