{"id":2783,"date":"2004-08-25T15:59:11","date_gmt":"2004-08-25T22:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=2783"},"modified":"2004-08-25T15:59:11","modified_gmt":"2004-08-25T22:59:11","slug":"how-democracy-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2004\/08\/25\/how-democracy-works\/","title":{"rendered":"How Democracy Works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello, and welcome to the last 70 days before the US Presidential Election!  For those of you new to the process, here&#8217;s how things will unfold between now and November 2nd:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>95% of the electorate has performed their civic duty by paying attention to the candidates and issues surrounding the upcoming election, and therefore know who they are going to vote for.  Because these people are responsible citizens of the republic, no one gives a rat&#8217;s ass about them (except insofar as they can be shaken down for money).<\/li>\n<li>Monies collected from the 95% will be spent on the 5% who have so far been too apathetic to learn about said candidates\/issues.<\/li>\n<li>The money can&#8217;t be given to the 5% directly (as this would constitute bribery), so it will instead be given to television networks.<\/li>\n<li>The networks utilize the public broadcast spectrum, so hypothetically the money will go right back to the people who contributed it, except it won&#8217;t, because the government licensed the airwaves to the networks on the condition that they operate &#8220;in the public interest,&#8221; which apparently involves taking millions of dollars to air ads that obfuscate the issues and misrepresent the candidates.<\/li>\n<li>On November 2, the 5% of undecided voters will decide not to vote after all when they get drawn into an episode of some terrible sitcom that will be cancelled midseason after one of the aforementioned television networks realizes that it has squandered the millions of dollars they received for showing the ads funded by the 95% of people who paid attention.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m so glad we&#8217;re exporting American-style democracy to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n<p>Oh and hey,  people of Washington State.  Right now, according to most polls, Kerry is leading by 11 points.  So, Republicans, I need a favor:  next time a pollster asks who you are going to vote for, say Kerry.  You don&#8217;t have to actually vote for the guy, just say you&#8217;re going to.  Or we need about 30 points-worth of Democrats to say they are going to vote for Bush, that works too.  What&#8217;s important is that we get a vast majority to say they are going to go one way or the other, so we can get Washington out of &#8220;Swing State&#8221; category and the campaigns will stop blanketing us with ads.  Because if I have to see one more commercial with Bush trying to look smirkily compassionate or Kerry trying to look stoically enthusiastic, I swear I&#8217;m going to write-in vote &#8220;Ben Dover.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello, and welcome to the last 70 days before the US Presidential Election! For those of you new to the process, here&#8217;s how things will unfold between now and November 2nd: 95% of the electorate has performed their civic duty by paying attention to the candidates and issues surrounding the upcoming election, and therefore know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}