‘Let’s Make a Deal’: Democracy is like a dumb old TV game show

By David McElroy · July 9, 2013

Have you noticed that politics is becoming more like television? There was a day — long before we were born — when politics was about ideas. Well … ideas, money and power. But at least there were real ideas involved back when politics was communicated solely through spoken or written words.

Today, politics is all a show. But it’s not just a spectator thing. It’s like a giant game show. With the help of the media, politics has become an elaborate version of the old game show, “Let’s Make a Deal.”

You all know how the game is played. Hundreds of people dress in ridiculous costumes, hoping for the chance to trade their dignity for unknown riches — just like those of us who line up like Dorothy and her pals asking the Wizard of Oz for gifts. But that’s mixing metaphors. Let’s look at the ways in which democracy is like “Let’s Make a Deal.”

First, everything’s apparently orchestrated by a slick huckster. In the TV show, we have Monty Hall. In real life, we have Monty Media. Yes, the media are there to make sure the right ideas are discussed, absorbed and approved of, shaping the conversation and excluding points of view they consider to be “outside the mainstream.” By shaping the conversation and guiding the process, the media decide which players get to play and what games they’re allowed to play.

Second, the contestants act like fools to get noticed — and the loudest fools get to play the game. On the show, people would dress like chickens or dice to look goofy and get on TV. In real life, people from interest groups who want things from government march through the streets or break store windows or just shovel lots of money at politicians, all of which get them noticed by either the media or the politicians.

It might be a company seeking protection from “unfair” competition. It might be a union wanting special rules to force workers to give them money. Or it could be people of various colors, creeds or planetary origins who want special treatment. Those who get noticed get to play various games — which may or may not lead to what they want. But they entertain the people watching on TV at home.

Third, someone else chooses the prizes — and they’re not necessarily what you really want. On the show, you might get a toaster as a prize. Or a crock pot. Or a mink coat. Now, you might not like toast or need a crock pot. But someone else decided who the prizes are for you. In real life, politicians decide what we get for the tax money they extort. They decide how much we pay and what we get to pay for — which roads get built, which wars get fought and which neighborhoods are worthy of having fire stations nearby.

And, finally, you might bargain and bargain for what you want, but if you pick the wrong politician to bribe … I mean, “support” … you might end up “zonked,” in which case you go home with nothing to show for your troubles. Except maybe a booby prize — like an expensive sports stadium built for rich billionaires with your money.

Fourth, the people involved in making the deals don’t pay for anything or care about where the merchandise came from. In the show, nobody has to put any money into the deals. Nobody asks who’s supplying the prizes (or why). In real life, people who go to the state for “help” don’t put their own money into deals. They let the state take money from other people to pay for what they want. They let the state use other people’s money to subsidize things such as solar power and alcohol fuels that people don’t want to pay for themselves.

And the people never ask who’s paying for the money they receive as their food stamp payments or their farm subsidies. They just tell themselves they deserve it. They don’t care whose effort actually earned the money before it was stolen to become a prize in the game.

So you can see that democracy is a lot like the game show. This creates a bit of a problem for those who just want to work hard and build things of value and be left alone, but those people aren’t entertaining. They don’t make for exciting and emotional pictures of TV, so who cares what they want?

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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