To the community,

The party primaries that select candidates for the presidency of the USA are harmful and destructive because they destroy party discipline. Ideally political parties cut and debate important national issues. It’s the job of parties by discussion and debate to educate citizens by defining the terms on a given subject. Without clear definitions, there cannot be meaningful discourse.

Presently no major party provides clear, concise language on important issues such as national health care, war, national security, etc. The parties drift into meaningless verbal chaos. They throw around words such as liberal and conservative, words that the political culture is lost for definitions. The country doesn’t have parties that teach the discourse. We have factions that divide the nation. There is no agreement on what is the national purpose.

Bill Crawford

Also, party primaries damage the political process because candidates must raise and spend fortunes to compete. The money is spent on a process that produces nothing but empty advertising that reduces the language to slogans and ripe baloney. Wealth is wasted, language is destroyed.

Before there were political party primaries, H.L. Mencken covered many party conventions that selected candidates for the presidency. He reported for the Baltimore Sun. His articles were collected in a book, “A Carnival of Buncombe”. Mencken was a severe critic of the idiocy that he witnessed in American politics. We have changed the method of selecting candidates, but the idiocy is intact. But because big money talks there is no chance there’ll be meaningful reform today or tomorrow.

Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe

PS: We can’t solve problems at home. So phony wars’ diversion controls the throne.