If your political opponents based an electoral campaign on a certain slogan and bombed, how much sense does it make to base your electoral campaign on the exact same slogan?
The moment when Kerry’s presidential campaign became all about the “Bush lied” slogan, I knew the campaign was hopelessly lost. And I was right. The absolute majority of voters does not care about lies enough to reject a candidate on this basis. People over the age of six are not all that traumatized by lying. This might be a sad reality but it’s reality.
So can anybody tell me why the Republicans are framing their 2016 presidential campaign in terms of “She lied about Benghazi“?
We all know that Americans don’t care about foreign affairs. Yes, it’s sad, horrible, I’m as appalled as you are. But the fact remains: they don’t think other countries really exist and don’t care two straws what happens in all those places with weird names. How many people do you know who can find Benghazi on a map or even know in which direction to look? Go ask the guy at the gas station or the woman at the convenience store and observe the reaction. My students couldn’t even name the countries the US borders. Neither could my friend’s students at an East Coast college.
Besides, there has been a domestic act of terror since Benghazi. People have short attention spans. You can’t expect them to remember the terror act that happened before the most recent terror act. Especially when the most recent one took place in a city with a clear and comforting name of Boston.
Anybody who believes that a lie about anything, let alone Benghazi, will make any impression on anybody during this election cycle is out of touch with reality.
And the entire country just died of boredom. Rand Paul would attract more attention if he just kept yakking about fetuses.
Clarissa's Blog 
Americans seem really only interested in themselves, for sure, but not even too interested in themselves. I was reflecting of late on a point I had recently been overlooking, which is that the modern shamanic types who cure themselves do so by exposing themselves to the worst possible personal traumas that they can find in the dungeons of their minds. Once they have encountered these horrible things and indeed reveled in them for a long time, they can pronounce themselves cured — for they really are cured by then.
Americans, though, they want shamanism lite. They want everything lite.
This shows that they are not really that interested in themselves at all.
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I’ve got to agree. From what I’ve gathered throughout my life, Americans care deeply about these things and nothing else: Our Team (usually, not always, a sports team — it can also be a political party), what’s on tv (and increasingly on the internet, which for Americans is turning into the new television), and their own family members’ activities (but not their thoughts and dreams, we’d rather not know what mom, dad, and the kids are actually thinking).
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Why are we limiting this to Americans? I recognise quite a lot of people I know in what you’ve described, and I live in England.
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I can only speak for my own country. I’m trying to avoid that imperialist habit of criticizing countries I don’t live in and have possibly never been too (though I have been to England, but hardly feel qualified to make a judgment of it based on a single visit of two weeks over thirty years ago).
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Also, forgot to add that the post is about the attitudes of Americans, not any other country’s inhabitants.
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Clarissa, I snorted my way through this post.
Especially this: Besides, there has been a domestic act of terror since Benghazi. People have short attention spans. You can’t expect them to remember the terror act that happened before the most recent terror act. Especially when the most recent one took place in a city with a clear and comforting name of Boston.
Another reason why people don’t care:the deceased are foreign diplomats ABROAD. Foreign diplomats who go out of their way to talk to people “over there” by learning foreign languages and about different cultures instead of regarding them as ululating cartoons. Americans believe the comforting fairy tale that any ridiculous measure will keep them safe should they confine themselves to the country proper (or really the lower 48). Planes are for people who can’t drive. It’s too much to ask people (aka the Republican base) who get their jollies by shitting on New York City to care about safety of people who travel abroad let alone their comfort.
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