Is the debate date April 1 ?A thought courtesy of Hunter at dailykosYeah, they're trying to kill us.
Maybe not kill us physically, sure. Maybe it's just an attempt so demoralize America that everyone will just stay home next November. It will be one clown show after another, over and over, getting sillier and sillier, until the mere thought of politics sends any sane person into a cold sweat, and causes them to lock themselves in their closet or hide under their bed for days at a time. You think you want a democracy, America? All right then, we'll give you democracy: Watch this! And this! And have some of this while you're at it! Had enough yet? No?!
The plot is to make primary season so stupid—and I don't mean normal, political stupid, I mean Toddlers and Tiaras stupid—that only stupid people can bear to watch any of it. Then, when the elections finally roll around, only stupid people will have survived the process. The only people left standing to vote will be people who take Donald Trump seriously, or think Michele Bachmann is a foreign policy genius, or who don't understand that Newt Gingrich looks on them less as fellow citizens than as a source of cheap potential food.
It might work. I can certainly see a dystopian near-future arising where the political season becomes so painful, so absolutely unpalatable that almost nobody in America could tolerate even tuning in. We're halfway there already. Tipping the scales for good might only require ice skating moderators, or a debate in which all the candidates had to give their answers in the form of short puppet shows, or Ron Paul in front of a grill, demonstrating recipes from his recently published cookbook. The ultimate desired result would be something akin to the famous climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with audience members having their faces melt off just from glancing at the stage, and the television cameras would all burst into flames.
That, then, would be the final test for who could vote. Not a poll tax, or literacy tests, but a test of will. If you can watch the spectacle of all that the GOP throws at you and still retain some bare thread of sanity, and still want to show up in a voting booth, then you will be allowed to vote. The rest of us will be quivering heaps, resigned to whatever form of government the dimwit class might assign for us, so long as we no longer have to watch Donald Trump moderating presidential anythings ever again.
