Wouldn't it be nice to be treated like intelligent voters again?

If you're one of those Americans who love to watch reality shows, you're in for a treat.

If, on the other hand, you would like to see the next president selected by intelligent voters on the basis of character and issues, you're probably out of luck.

Sanders and Clinton

We are still more than a year out from the 2016 election, but if you have been following what passes for news on cable networks and the Internet, you might think the fortunes of various candidates were rising and falling every day.

At one point several weeks ago, the media breathlessly reported that Hillary Clinton's support among Democratic women had fallen from 77 percent to 42 percent.

Of course we're just talking about preference polls, and even there, polls within the Democratic Party. Should Secretary Clinton win the nomination, as still seems likely, her support will certain return and probably even go higher.


We hear new poll numbers on the Republican race two or three times a week, about Donald Trump rising and falling, about the other outsiders polling strongly and about expected front-runner Jeb Bush struggling to  connect with voters.

None of this is real.

None of it.

Other than fund-raising, not a single thing has happened or will happen in 2015 matters at all. Yes, two Republicans (out of 17) have already withdrawn from the race, but neither of them were going to be a factor at all next year.

Rick Perry had already exposed himself as unfit in 2012, and Wisconsin's Scott Walker was too unlikeable to get very far. There are certainly others still in who have no hope of ending up on the ticket, but think about it. Perry and Walker didn't even stay in long enough for one vote to be cast for or against them.

When they do coverage other than about the horse race, it's usually something stupid like Trump telling Jeb Bush that his brother Gee Dubya didn't keep the nation safe from terrorism.

“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” Mr. Trump said. “He was president, O.K.? The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”

That's a tough one to ignore. Republicans have been exonerating Bush for 14 years, saying he had been in office less than eight months and 911 was really Bill Clinton's fault.

Indeed, when the former vice president, Dick Cheney, is asked about national security, all he'll say is he's proud he and Bush kept America safe.

And our political discourse sinks a little deeper into the quicksand of stupidity.

Does anyone challenge anything anymore? No matter how ridiculous a statement by a candidate, no one in the media ever seems to call it a lie or even say it's incorrect.

Someone could say the sun was shining at 2 a.m. and rather than challenge it, we get something like "Well, that's his opinion."

A lot of this comes down to the difference between readers and viewers. When Americans read newspapers and newsmagazines for their knowledge of the world, that was a proactive thing. People read as much as they wanted till they felt comfortable with their level of learning.

But once television was the main news source, people's absorption of the news became a passive thing. Viewers learned only what the station wanted them to know.

And the more passive we become, the more ignorant we become, the less interested we are in complicated things that tax our mind.

Once all that happens, reality becomes less real to us than reality shows.