While waiting to see if we have an election or another tragicomedy coming up at the polls, I’ve tried to keep up with the news. But it’s hard to do. There is so much of it — or whatever passes for news now.

Most of it is not so much news as marketing. Not so much factual reporting as role-playing for the appropriate audience and time slot. Drama.

“Breaking News!” is the lead-in for both local and national broadcasts at the hour on the hour, and every half-hour segment consists of about 17 minutes of what is called news. The remainder is the selling of something. Much of the content of the 17 minutes is sales, too. All packaged in essentially the same format each night after dinner, with the breaking news intro to the “billions at risk” from the approaching weather, to the final soft and fuzzy good news signoff.

Walter Winchell is crying in heaven — or wherever — and Walter Cronkite must remove his glasses and wipe his eyes each night much as he did when he pronounced to the entire watching nation that President Kennedy was dead.

Except that he would not reach as many today if history was repeated, because according to one of those polls (why do we do this to ourselves?) more people get their news from Twitter. Something like 70% of the population gets its news on social media.

We had faith in the news media, flaws and all, because it was more news that marketing. Newscasts were 15 minutes twice a day. Everybody got two newspapers — a big daily and a local weekly. Today, it’s more noise, TMI (too much info), and no MYOB (mind your own business).

And it is for these people that earnest and dedicated public servants do all they can to preserve the vote. No wonder the absolutist right wing wants to limit the vote. If they control the population with a cheap campaign of lies and sugarcoated solutions with no staying power, they can take control and keep it with brute force. Goodbye democracy. Who needs it when you can entertain the masses into compliance.

Herschel Walker, a Republican Senate candidate for Georgia, speaks at his "United Georgia" campaign bus tour in Carrollton, Ga., on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) (Arvin Temkar/AP)

Case in point is the fiasco in Georgia’s U.S. Senate race. An obviously unqualified, even clueless, former pro football star with no experience in public service or leadership skills actually has a chance to win a seat in Congress. His opponent is a respected and experienced public servant, undeniably able and deserving of the office.

In other times and places, it would be a no-brainer. Well, maybe it is literally a no-brainer, come to think of it. The inept football candidate is backed by Republicans, and the competent candidate is a longtime resident, a clergyman and community leader, who is a Democrat.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier lamented the fact that the balance of GOP representation in Congress was threatened by the lack of quality candidates. His concern about quality in the Republican ranks is a little late. He had a chance to clean house all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue — twice — and left a mess that has come back to bite the party.

The cynicism and hypocrisy are such that Republican leaders are willing to back what is bad for the nation so long as it keeps the party in power. Real leadership would ensure that good credentials — not popularity — won party support.

They know this. It is of no consequence to partisan politicians who is best qualified to serve. It’s all about their personal or party interests. Winning is all. Even if it makes losers of the common people.

But the common people still share the blame or the responsibility for what happens to America’s liberal democracy. As Benjamin Franklin said to a citizen when asked what kind of government we will have: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

He understood that only a liberal democracy, based on fairness and integrity, has any staying power. Another form of democracy, held only by brute power, will be destructive in the long run, and will ultimately be overthrown as surely as the rule of Britain over the colonies.

Dean Minnich has worked in both print and electronic journalism. He is retired and writes from Westminster.