half-hearted

Ready or not, election

season is here

The fi rst votes in the nomination process that will determine the names on the ballot for the presidential election in November happened this week. The Iowa Caucuses were held Monday night and the New Hampshire primary is Feb. 11. These fi rst two contests are meant to narrow the fi eld of candidates as the primary season gets going. Minnesota voters get their say March 3, Wisconsin voters April 7.

I lived in Iowa until eight years ago, attending and reporting on several caucuses. I still fi nd it amusing how the political class has more than a mild contempt for the “retail” politics that need to be practiced in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Retail” politics mean that candidates actually need to come to towns large and small, shake hands, look real people in the eye and answer questions. The conventional wisdom is this one-on-one campaigning allows voters to get the true measure of the candidates as well as an opportunity to hear directly their plans to address problems facing the nation.

Having been there, I can tell you many of the politicians do a fairly good job with this style of campaigning. The ones who don’t do it well are the ones who either skip the state or spend money on ads. Others argue Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t diverse enough, aren’t representative of the makeup of the nation.

I respectfully beg to differ. States like Iowa, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Wisconsin have hard working people who play by the rules, make sure their children get good educations and believe in the inherent goodness of our nation. While we may be a bit cynical, in the end if we believe you are a good person, there’s very little we won’t do when asked to do it.

But we are far from being fools or bumpkins. I think this unnerves politicians the most when they are forced to look us in the eyes and speak the truth. It’s easier to look at a camera, it can’t take the measure of your words and actions. A camera won’t hold your eyes while you are talking.

Michael Bloomberg (who got in the race late) is skipping Iowa and New Hampshire, opting to try and make an impact on Super Tuesday, March 3. In addition to Minnesota, voters in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia will hold primaries or caucuses. Bloomberg is spending millions of his own money on advertising in these states in hopes of getting the Democratic nomination.

While I understand the strategy, I hope he doesn’t succeed. I have nothing against Bloomberg. But I believe he is shortchanging himself and rural America by making the conversation about the future a one-way dialog.

In a few months, the political picture will become more focused as the two nominees are decided. We will (hopefully) get a small break before the conventions and the all-out war that will happen right up until November. It seems like we have been in campaign season since January, 2017.

Hopefully, the nominees will remember the lessons learned from interacting with voters in small town America. They could do a lot worse.

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@theameryfreepress. com, telephone 715-268-8101 or write me at P.O. Box 424, Amery, WI, 54001.

Thanks for reading I’ll keep in touch. Feel free to do the same. Publisher Tom Stangl

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are holding a physical copy of the paper, but we are in 2020 after all. You could potentially be reading this on a computer screen, or more advanced yet, a smartphone. Not long ago this would be unimaginable, but now technology is on a non-stop course that is moving rapidly toward an increasing involvement in our every day lives. So, what is it that we tend to do with this incredible technology?

Well, we certainly love our social media. Believe me when I say I am as guilty as the next person. Every day, I wake up, drink a glass of water and jump on Facebook. Why? At this point, I think that it has become entirely habitual, but I do think it serves some roles that would otherwise be fi lled by previous forms of technology.

For instance, my wife and I don’t have cable television at home, so Facebook tends to be a source of “news” per se. Of course, you have to be hypercritical of the platforms you take your information from, but it’s still a way to fi nd out what’s going on in the world in a way that is more personalized to you.

We also love watching videos of all kinds. It wasn’t until roughly 1998 that the decline of VHS tapes and the rise of DVD s began. Even then you had to have a DVD player to watch any kind of video that wasn’t already on TV or the bare bones of the Internet. Now, if I want to watch a specifi c video about fi shing, I can pull out my phone, type in what I want and I will likely fi nd 100 videos on that exact subject. I think that is pretty darn remarkable.

Speaking of videos, let’s talk about streaming services. I mentioned that my wife and I don’t have cable TV. My question for you is this: why on earth would we want it?

There are at least four or fi ve major streaming platforms like Netfl ix, Hulu and Amazon Prime that provide countless shows and movies for a fraction of the cost that a traditional cable provider would offer. Some, like Netfl ix, have no commercials at all, others have some commercials, but nothing close to the amount that cable has. So, lower cost, fewer commercials, and more to watch on demand leads me to believe that cable television is likely a dying animal.

Now we’re even dipping our toes in the world of Artifi cial Intelligence (A.I.). Amazon’s voice controlled “Alexa” allows you to connect your entire world to a voice controlled A.I of sorts. You could say, “Alexa, we’re out of toilet paper, could you order me some?” and a pack of toilet paper could show up at your door the next day. As long as it doesn’t result in a robot takeover, I think I’m okay with it, but it’s a bit eerie to say the least.

While all of this is very neat and convenient, the reason I am so perplexed and amused by this fasEditor Matt Anderson Are we growing with technology? SEE ANDERSON, PAGE 8

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