Explore "The Game of Politics" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Nowhere "on God's green earth" -- it is fitting, that this paper contain a bit of bosh -- nowhere is so much insufferable stuff talked in a given period of time as in an American political convention. It is there that all those objectionable elements of the national character which evoke the laughter of Europe and are the despair of our friends find freest expression, unhampered by fear of any censorship more exacting than that of "the opposing party" -- which takes no account of intellectual delinquencies, but only of moral. The "organs" of the "opposing party" will not take the trouble to point out -- even to observe -- that the "debasing sentiments" and "criminal views" uttered in speech and platform are expressed in sickening syntax and offensive rhetoric.
Doubtless an American politician, statesman, what you will, could / go into a political convention and signify his views with simple, / unpretentious common sense, but doubtless he never does.