“Delta Airlines, you might have noticed, does not run negative TV ads about USAir. It does not show pictures of the crash of USAir Flight 427, with a voice-over saying: “USAir, airline of death. Going to Pittsburgh? Fly Delta instead.”

And McDonald’s, you might also have noticed, does not run ads reminding viewers that Jack in the Box hamburgers once killed two customers. Why? Because Delta and McDonald’s know that if the airline and fast-food industries put on that kind of advertising, America would soon be riding trains and eating box-lunch tuna sandwiches.”

“Politics is the only American industry whose participants devote their advertising budgets to the regular, public, savage undermining of one another. It is the only American industry whose participants devote prodigious sums to destroying whatever shred of allegiance any of them might once have won with their customers.”

“Whereas picking an airline that suspends you in a sealed aluminum tube at 30,000 feet is a matter of trust. So is picking a fast-food restaurant that presents you with heavily camouflaged meat confected by a 16-year-old with acne. So is picking a politician, who rifles your paycheck and regulates your life. Yet only the politicians work systematically to kill that trust.”

“Add up all the individual acts of political homicide, however, and you have a political class that is collectively committing suicide. Do we really need seminars on why voters loathe politicians?”

Excerpt From: Krauthammer, Charles. “Things That Matter.” Crown Forum, 2013-10-22. iBooks.

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