[Osborn F Enready]

Scribbler said:
In other words, as a society we have a compulsion to pick a side because we like to pick the winning side, and WE like to win. The non-partisan approach IS the best way to go, but it is also the way that will never catch on with our "We're number ONE" society. For proof of that point, just look at the steadily increasing negativity of the ads in the last few elections. We hate to lose, period.

I say:
While I agree with your explanation of the current voter, I have to ask if you think people pick a winner because it is a learned over time, cultivated response. I mean, in the past, throughout history, politics becomes more important to the individual the further you go back in this nation. Our intrest in "picking a winner" really seemed to evolve in my opinion, during and after WWII. For this I blame the media, and public education for a reason.

I blame the media because:
(from site: http://www.media-ecology.org/publica.../Habermas.html )

Radio, film, and television by degrees reduce to a minimum the distance that a reader is forced to maintain toward the printed letter—a distance that required the privacy of appropriation as much as it made possible the publicity of a rational–critical exchange about what had been read. With the arrival of the new media the form of communication as such has changed; they have had an impact … more penetrating … than was ever possible for the press. … In comparison with printed communications the programs sent by the new media curtail the reactions of their recipients in a peculiar way. They draw the eyes and ears of the public under their spell but at the same time, by taking away its distance … deprive it of the opportunity to say something and to disagree. (pp. 170–171)

With commercialization and economic concentration, the private media have become “complexes of societal power” that threaten their critical role (p. 188). Media ecology similarly marks the beginning of electronic culture with the penny press in the 1830s and the introduction of the telegraph in 1844, as McLuhan argues. This electronic media culture only intensifies with the sound and images of film, radio, and television. The effect of electronic media culture is a reversal of the cultural effects of print culture: the loss of rationality, detachment, linearity, nationalism, and individualism. The new values are involvement, simultaneity, globalism, and the collective.

I blame the public education system because: (My own words)

Since the introduction of education into our society, we have been focused on EDUCATION of academics. They taught reading so people could educate themselves once leaving school through the printed word. They taught writing, so people could express themselves in the written word. They taught arithmetic because math is ESSENTIAL to daily life. They also focused on creative pursuits, such as literary classics, creative writing, and exploration of intellectual pursuits. So what is missing here? ..............Sports, being present in an academic setting.

With the creation of "public schooling"(funded by the public), we saw an introduction of sports into academic settings. It was introduced in a benevolent, well meaning way of kids to socialize, stay fit, keep occupied and out of mischief, and personal betterment through physical sport. At that time, sportsmanship was a very serious thing and "being a good sport" was critical to the system. It was a genuine way to teach "good sportsmanship" through a type of mentoring atmosphere.

Over the last, say, mainly 60 years, we have seen those benevolent intentions, and reasonable foundations turn on themselves, and are literally eroding their own existence. This is happening because the importance of winning has become more important than good sportsmanship, even at the most elementary levels of sports/education. We see kids who excel at sports, PUSHED through the system, to help the school team, at the cost of the childs education. We have watched schools and colleges offer unreasonable incentives to kids to focus on sports, more than academics. We have from the inside out, cultivated a nation of WINNER TAKES ALL mentality, and also the mentality that losing for any reason, is unacceptable. This discourages risk taking, and standing on principles. People who stand on principles for their decision making, RISK losing. Those who bet on the sure winner, are guaranteed to win, but really lose, because they are voting with an intent to win, instead of the reason for voting in the first place, which is to better the situation with which they are in.


Manipulative public education, and manipulative media, have shaped the reality people see. It is unfair to blame the people, for something they have little if any clue, is even happening. They are the gears of the societal machine, and when the leaders of society pervert the messages the people get, they contend they are "fine tuning" the machine, when really, they are de-tuning it to a level of control they can wield with confidence.

As a sidenote, think to yourself when the first time you heard the saying "We're all winners!" Is it because winning is so important that it is "un-pc" to be a loser?