How Twitter Has Screwed Up Politics (and how it could have made it better)

The history of The United States is rife with eloquent letters between men of great intelligence and stature. These written dialogues act as a testament to how our founding fathers intertwined their political beliefs with their philosophical ones. The letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are a wonderful example of this.

In a letter dated October 28^th, 1813, Jefferson wrote to Adams:

“There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent it’s ascendancy.”

This is considered one of the most important personal letters ever written on the subject of the United States and its basic principles. The entire letter is just over 2.500 words long.

Conversely, this is a twitter post from Senator Chuck Grassley on the subject of healthcare reform:

“Distortion of end-of-life debate is atempt 2avoid debate:govt takovr,xplodin deficit,cost of Pelosi bill Focus shld b viabl nonGovt plan”

Sen. Grassley, an avid twatter

I know you can’t see it, but the red wiggly line that notifies you of a misspelled word in Microsoft Word tied a rope around “viabl,” leapt off of “Govt,” and hung itself just below “plan.” It did this with good reason. The sentence above is what our political debate has become in America. All the eloquence and insight in the hand written, carefully crafted letters of yore have been decimated by new media outlets like twitter.

Our political debate has been reduced to nothing more the guttural spurts of stupid that far too closely resemble the dialogue from “Quest for Fire.”  The truly saddening part of it all is that sentences like the one above are being used to explain something as massively complex as healthcare reform. All of the bills being considered right now are over 1,000 pages long, yet Sen. Grassley and Sen. Arlen Specter (the man Grassley in currently engaged in a bit of a twitter war of words with) are attempting to make their finer points through a service that only allows 140 characters of suck.

So, in honor of this of these two geezers tweeting their catty political rhetoric, as well as all the other idiotic politicians that choose to tweet anything more important than “just 8 a slightly upsetting sandwich :*-(“, we are proud to present a slew of other important moments in US history that have been Twitified…

#JohnHancock_lol_cock: “so drnk rite now. no idea wat i just signed.”

#Abelincoln: “im all 4 scores…the titty bar, that is!!!”

#Abelincoln: “Box seats. Suck it.”

#PrezFDR: “if I could walk I’d kick a jap in the face”

#Harry_Truman: “churchill’s gardening naked…again. his balls dishearten me”

#Harry_Truman: “Note to Self: japs allergic to nukes. Keep in mind 4 l8tr”

#Sen.J.McCarthy: “saw jar of marinara. Its red. Now on list.”

#Oswald:”BOOM! HEADSHOT!!1!”

#NASA: ”prelim test reprt 0% cheese content”

#R.Nixon: “I am not a book Lol”

#R.Nixon: “i don’t see how all of this makes me any less awesomer than u”

#CharlieWilson: “givng rpgs to afgans can only help us in the long run”

#BillClint: “Love smell of good cigar ;)”

#HillClint: “Fuck You” @BillClint

#GWBush: “the pretzels are fucking delici-AHHGRR!”

#GWBush: “Iraq, afganistan, iran…w/e. they’re all brown ppl to me”

#DickCheney: “BOOM!! HEADSHOT!!1! Lolz! for reals, tho. ur face looks like a quail dude”#SarahPalin: “I just saw a bulldog with lipstick. It was below his waist. How cute!”

#JohnMccain: “had to go to Alaska to find decent vp. Alaska. I’m fuked”

#PrezObama: “98% of you are retarded. I’m sure of it. It’s the only explanation”