Friday, November 20, 2015

Rubio spin: welders vs philosophers

We should all be grateful that Marco Rubio has offered us some fresh insight into the  exercise that we once called presidential politics.  The Florida Republican informed us that welders make more money than philosophers.  I'm not sure where that fits into the  grand narrative of leading America, as Donald  Trump puts it, to greatness again.  But there it is:   welders vs philosophers. What an exciting thought!  Never heard anybody
of a lesser mind put  it quite that way.  The pace is quickening.

For those of us  who have never encountered  the thought after many years in the partisan foxholes,  we had no choice but to leave  it to the metrics of the welders and philosophers to tell us of the relative merits of  their chosen  life's work.  Having been neither, I can only say that several reliable sources quickly dug into their volumes of scholarly research and concluded  that Rubio's reach may have exceeded his grasp in the opaque world of, say, Hegel  or Schopenhauer, both of whom I joylessly encountered in a single college level philosophy class.

Besides, both have expired and are not here to defend themselves.

So I looked for parallel comparisons to challenge the senator.  Do welders make more money than,  say, U.S. senators?  It may be argued that  politicians who weld hollow  ideas on the campaign trail  or wherever there is a TV camera in their face should be considered for a pay raise and  better parking spots to inflate  their  own prestige  as engaged representatives of the people.

That much would be required if they spent  24 hours a day to deliver themselves from such public menaces to civilization as Ben Carson, who has likened migrants to "mad dogs"  and Trump, who roars that the  only way to defeat ISIS is  to "bomb the shit out of them" leaving only a moonscape  behind.

With the phalanx of Republican presidential candidates groping to pick up cues to counter Rubio, must we consider whether pizza twirlers have a brighter future than the whirling windmill of current GOP aspirants for the Oval office?  We can only guess where this is going.





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