Thursday, August 20, 2009

Drugs and the present attention crisis

The Obama administration and Democratic leadership hung itself on bipartisanship out of the gate.

Doing politics inside the box of gentlemanly horse trading has slowly contracted into an arena so small that complete and utter idiocy can seize everyone's attention just long enough for the next misguided missile launch of poorly devised policy. Instead of writing a bill that serves a specific purpose, laundry lists of interests are wrapped into labyrinths so mind-bendingly dull that the leading cog turners have decided that drugs are the answer. Because journalists and "journalists" are at the forefront of dealing with this inane minutiae, they have manufactured a whole host of apologist articles about how "brain doping" is just what young turks need to compete in a world with Google.

But Adderall makes insights less brilliant than the carefully-researched and well-considered analysis of the unaltered mind, only exacerbating the problem. Meanwhile, Democrats think they're being righteous by clinging to "facts" and "analysis" and looking for the "truth" while the truthiness is pushing them right out of the mainstream. Because you can't supply well-reasoned thoughts of that type at the pace of the 24 hour news cycle, Dems look like scrambling, bumbling morons when they go on the tee vee and try to pitch their latest labyrinthine plan concocted by some Adderaddled twentysomething, even though same twentysomething is standing out of the camera shot smacking his forehead and saying, no it's a very simple 7 point plan!

Everyone's watching to see if their spons-- er, donors and "coalition partners" would be ok with what's being said, so the level of debate gets watered down one more level, until it resembles James Tyrone's whiskey. Well, everyone can enjoy a drink of a substance that thinned, but there's no party left.

-- A Capitol Hill policymanufacturer who does not need attention-enhancing drugs

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