Political shopping is entertainment, though the outcome is not

Generally, women love to shop for entertainment and use of their spare time, while men might rather sign up for the cotillion or just slit their wrists. But while in the tourist mode, when shopping often equates to gifts, things change. Every foreign city has its shopping district, be it in Istanbul, Turkey or Seoul, South Korea; and Americans go forth in the most naïve well intentioned shopping attacks where most confidently know they are being fleeced by price or counterfeit goods. And this is after long periods of haggling and walking away, and then coming back. Then they come home to talk about the good deal they got, and the seller does the same.

This dance of people and time goes on every election, it seems. The politicians sell their wares, the American people shop and haggle, and both seem to go home satisfied. The logic is indisputable … it has been going on for decades and there is no reason to expect things to change.

But change is constant. The American population is larger every decade, the demographics change to include population numbers and values, and standards change. While there is a real concern for cultural lowering of standards and poor education of our children, there is also change towards renewing the idea of shame for sex out of marriage, and babies without fathers, or for double standards where adult jobs supercede our national interest’s in our children succeeding in graduation rates or much lowered death rates from auto wrecks and guns.

Now that is shopping! As always, let the buyer beware. But also at last let the politician seller beware. What most citizens in the future are shopping for is our national future, and their children’s future, boys and girls. And the products may look much more like standards of behavior that include shame for living together without marriage, and having babies out of wedlock. Family shoppers will do their part, but so can American culture.

Somehow many have been indoctrinated in the last five decades that to impose their standards about American civilization is morally wrong. Those indoctrinators have been superceded, or just missed the boat. What they are selling is a losing political business. What shoppers are seeking is changing everything, and so are the changing demographics.