Latest / Commentary - TJ Meadows / A Nasty Election!

Transcript

A Nasty Election! · Commentary - TJ Meadows

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The election would change the country, depending on perspective, for
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: better or worse. The right to property, they said, was
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in peril. Adultery, murder, even incest would become common practice.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Bibles would burn, Scandal would reign. Dictatorship loomed. Foreign powers
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: were secretly controlling a candidate. Charges of godlessness flew. Warnings
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: came that the Republic itself was at stake. This was
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: not last week. It was eighteen hundred, John Adams versus
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, And when it ended, Jefferson prevailed in what
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: historians call the Revolution of eighteen hundred, the first peaceful
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: transfer of power between rival political parties in American history.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: There's nothing new under the sun. Politics was rough from
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the beginning. Technology has changed, human nature has not. Adams
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and Jefferson rarely threw the mud themselves. Their allies did
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: that work. Party newspapers of the day were so partisan
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: it was hard to tell where the campaign ended and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the press began. Pamphlets filled the role of today's mailers.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Surrogates carried attacks the way social media influencers and operatives
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: do now, and though candidates often stayed above the fray publicly,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: many were content to benefit from it privately. Sound familiar. Today,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the mailbox overflows, social media seethes, Outside money floods races,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: packs spend, nonprofits obscure donors. Candidates smile and say little.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So ask the questions, who's paying, why this candidate? What
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: do those paying want in return? What is the return
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: on the investment. Yes, it takes work to be an
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: informed voter, but self government always has. The republic is
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: not self sustaining. It depends on citizens willing to separate
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: spin from truth. Without an engaged electorate, America does not work.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Neither does West Virginia. And when more money than pours
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: into local races, the people's judgment is needed more now
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: than ever,