A Quote by Jeanne Shaheen

Too much of our political debate...has become a race to the bottom. An exchange of insults and slanders more appropriate to reality television than a legislature.
You could do much more in movies than you could on TV, and even movies were heavily censored. But in television, the areas of timorousness were fairly laid out. Race relations. Sex. Politics. There was a whole conglomeration of taboo themes. And even to date, though television has become a much freer medium, it's still far less free, far less creatively untrammeled than are the movies. They're infinitely more adult in that respect.
So far in facing this huge [peak oil] challenge, our political/economic system seems unable to cope with reality. We are forced to carry on living in an illusion that we have so much time to adapt to post-oil that we don't even need to be talking or thinking much about what a world without plentiful oil would look like. Reality has become too dangerous.
I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high - to permit the customary passions of political debate.
We have become bound by a political straitjacket that frames every debate: Too much federal government. Yet our forefathers forged this system for us. The federal government can accomplish what the states, acting alone or even in concert, cannot.
Television is much more complex, brain-challenging and involved than it used to be. It's almost impossible to watch a television show from 15 years ago; it's just too boring. I think modern television shows, with their intricate plots, are stimulating our minds. This is one reason IQs have been going up.
I think that too far, too much, to a greater degree than is anywhere near appropriate, America and our politics are being governed by more and more powerful interests, by fewer and fewer people in the sense of the amount of money that has controlled access and other kinds of things.
Reality television is to television what marble and gold are to real estate. The point is to dispense with the idea of taste. It's all id. The more unrestrained the better. We all know that 'reality' in reality television is not real. That anybody who would participate in reality television is a fake. But pretending otherwise makes them real.
We all agree on the core values of a free and open Internet. We simply may disagree on the appropriate regulatory framework for securing those values. And I would much rather have an open and honest debate about the appropriate regulatory framework as opposed to throwing misinformation out there to achieve political ends.
The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls. We become more significant individuals as we serve others. We become more substantive as we serve others—indeed, it is easier to “find” ourselves because there is so much more of us to find!
My view is instead of political discussions, persuasions, which dominate democracy, in our country we have taken our democracy to the other extreme. There is no debate, sufficient debate. There is court debate.
At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.
We as a people, as a state, and as a community, have too much promise, too much potential, and too much at stake to go any other way than forward. We are too strong in our hearts, too innovative in our minds, and too firm in our beliefs to retreat from our goals.
Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz did their best Donald Trump impersonation. All three unleashing an unprecedented string of insults and attacks fit more for a barroom than a presidential debate stage.
The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.
I focus on my work. If I let myself get distracted by the insults and slanders I wouldn't get anything substantive done.
Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.
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