Political Cynicism

http://www.veoh.com/collection/Penn-Says/watch/v18318330asZynqbp#

For my post I watched a video blog by Penn Jillette. In it he discusses polical cynicism and believes that it maybe called for in an election and does have an effect on whether or not you will vote for someone. He says that when hanging out with his friends, they call the politicians liars and hypocrites even if that is the person they are rooting for to win an election. He closed up by saying that we should just take politicians at their word and what they say and "the only way to waste your vote is to vote."
I think that this touched on a topic we discussed in class. When we talked about political cynicism, we said it has the possibility to make someone not want to vote. Penn is an example supporting this. Because of his cynicism, he's turned off by the whole voting process and believes it's a waste because either way a liar or hypocrite will win. While this does support that argument, I don't think it's necessarily true in all cases. Yes, maybe a cynic will view the election process as picking a lesser of two evils but that's just it, you want the lesser of the two evils to win, so some people may want to vote just to make sure the one they are more cynical towards doesn't win.

Christine Crowley