Suppose you decided - out of a sense of civic duty, or greed, or whatever - to run for public office. Your opponent somehow gets and releases your Member name and invites the public to browse your posts. The press and your opponent look for sensational quotes. Do you think your history here would help or harm your chances for election?
I’m quite certain that among all my posts that almost anyone could find some absurd comment of mine terribly offensive. I would be dead in the water in any election where most voters wouldn’t know me personally. Voters don’t seem to appreciate irony and pessimism.
Truthfully, I’m sure I’d be dead in the water for plenty of other reasons as well, but that’s another thread.
Er, I’d be doomed. (But the Monster Raving Loony party might let me be their candidate)
I’ve said some things in the past that are from a different me. Things that I don’t even think, let alone say these days.
I don’t think I would run for public office unless I had a chance to make some changes in accordance to my values and beliefs, which include potentially controversial things such as legalized/regulated prostitution (from a crime & public health standpoint), putting discrimination based on sexual orientation at the same level as other discrimination, and allowing states to decide based on their own cultural values on issues such as drugs and gay marriage (but encouraging states to legalize and regulate the sale of all drugs (thusly creating a safe market) and ramp up scientific-knowledge-based drug education and solely voluntary rehab services (again all from a crime and public health standpoint, with an emphasis on reducing harmful addiction and overdose/bad-drugs situations), and also to allow gay marriage), and trying to change the role of doctors to ‘keepers of health knowledge’ rather than ‘keepers of drugs’.
I think that if the public were ready to accept my views on those things, they wouldn’t be bothered by the things I’ve said on the boards. In that case, actually, I’d probably even prefer that they read my posts, because I provide a lot of what I believe is strong support and evidence for my views in some of them.
As it stands now, the public probably wouldn’t agree with me on those things, and so I’d probably be pretty screwed either way.
I think if somebody tried really hard and did a good bit of digging, they might be able to turn up a post where I let slip that I’m gay. That would probably knock me out of the running for a lot of posts. And I think I’ve probably admitted to smoking pot in some thread or another; if not then I guess this one would suffice.
But I think most damning of all would be my demonstrated complete ignorance about such a wide variety of topics. That would only qualify me to be President of the United States.
Quite frankly, I’m already unelectable (not a member of either of the major parties, my political views are in a mix that would offend the ideologues, my lack of the suitable temperment) as it is, so I can’t see a way my posts would make it worst.
I’d be unelectable considering how often I’ve mentioned my religious leanings and sexuality. Then there’re a few other, far more incriminating confessions but nothing too controversial.
Ditto here. I stand by everything I’ve written here, but much of it — my avowed atheism, my belief that marijuana should be legalized, my perceptiveness at recognizing Showgirls for the masterpiece it is — makes me totally and completely unelectable. Of course, I’m not shy about those views anyway (I have the bad habit of giving straight answers to straight questions), so it’s not like my posts here would be a huge revelation to anybody who spends anything like a substantial amount of time with me.
Au contraire Tom! Every time you take to the keyboard my mind develops an eager tumescence, that can only be satisfied by plunging into the moist, limitless depths of your reservoir of knowledge.
