I gotta tell ya, politics can raise my emotional level like few other subjects. The only way to avoid this uptick of emotion is to remove yourself as much as possible from the effects of media presentations, like political commercial advertisements from either the aspirants to office or the PAC’s who support them.
Every aspirant, and every PAC lies to us. They point at the opposition and say the most horrible things they can muster. They use public statements, sound bytes, and very carefully selected and edited video clips to support their client’s position but tear down the opponent’s position.
One of their favorite tactics is to take a few words, a phrase, a few seconds of video, remove it completely from its original context, and they marry that tiny specimen to some outright lie which will disparage or damage the opponent.
All of them do it. Every single one. They lie. They manipulate public opinion as much as they can. They DO NOT CARE if the general public is smart enough to catch them in their lie. The ONLY THING they do care about is spreading their lie as far and as often as possible. You see, they know the unfortunate truth.
The truth is, that most of the general public is far too busy living their lives, and trying to improve their circumstances, to have the time or energy to research the candidates properly enough, and to learn their voting history, or their business history, or their public activities history enough to make any kind of coherent decision concerning for whom they will vote.
The TRUTH is, that intellect and facts can win debates, but emotion wins votes. Intellect and facts do not win votes. They never have. Therefore, the more positive emotion candidates can present about themselves, and the more negative emotion they can present about their opponents, the better their chances of winning.
Think about this statement: Politics and big business are not really different. Actually, they are exactly the same thing. They just wear different icons and banners.
At the highest levels of corporate business, everything is politics . . . the politics of my idea versus your idea. I poll my supporters and my opponents to gain ideas of what I need to do to gain support for my idea and what will sabotage your idea. I want to win so much I will even resort to whispers in the restroom casting my opponent in negative aspect. I will belittle them in any way I think possible to the person or persons listening to me at the moment. It doesn’t matter whether what I say is the truth or not, it only matters that I say it and they hear me say it. Emotion wins votes.
Don’t believe me? Ask Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln had two very different and both extremely important issues to use as platforms to prosecute the conflict with the South.
From as simple an aspect as I can imagine, there were basically those two issues. One was the rights of the State versus the rights of the Union of the States. The other one was slavery, and the the desired condition of Emancipation.
Federal versus State is a dry, legal issue with massive amounts of detail and debate-able positions. The results of those debates were as dry as dust, tasted about the same as dust, and had about as much effect as dust. Thousands of hours were spent by thousands of people in debating Union rights versus States rights between 1850 and 1865. But the thing that drove the war was the very emotional issue of slavery.
Emancipation was such an emotional issue it is still felt today, 175 years after the Civil War. And, it was not a “civil” war in any sense except in that it divided a nation. It was a horrible, nasty war which splintered and polarized families. Considering it from any number of aspects, it was the bloodiest, deadliest war ever fought in recorded history.
And Mr. Lincoln deliberately prosecuted this war basing nearly every speech he made on the issues leading up to the war on Emancipation . . . not on the comparative power levels and political positioning between the federal government of the Union of the States, versus those of the States, themselves.
The Union was supposed to be, was advertised to be, a VOLUNTARY union between all of the member States, and each State was considered to be sovereign. The participation of the sovereign State in the Union somewhat mitigated the power of the State in preference of the Union, which supposedly made each of the States and the Union of the States a stronger entity. But each and every State, being a voluntary participant, was supposed to be able to secede from that Union participation at any time it chose.
Dry. Dry and dusty rhetoric. All of it based on legal arguments concerning the interpretation of the phraseology utilized in the agreement documentation. How worked up can a person get over these issues if they are not a lawyer or a politician? Hell, most folks wouldn’t even understand the issues or questions raised, much less care a bunch about them. If it didn’t affect their everyday lives, then why get worked up about it?
Emancipation, however, is a massively emotional issue which has immediate bearing on every person, any person. It matters in a way anyone can FEEL and therefore understand. Slavery definitely affected the everyday lives of at least half the nation, at that time. Maybe more.
So, basically, the southern states said, “We are seceding now, to live our lives the way we wish to live them. Bye.”
Federal government, the Union of the States, said, “Nope, no way. You can’t secede. You’re gonna do as we say, and we say no more slavery.”
You know what happened after that.
Every good politician understands that emotion wins votes, while debates over law and facts only have value inside a courtroom.
So . . . the candidates lie to you, to us. They use whatever they think they can get away with to manipulate us, and they either omit uncomfortable facts or make up absurd lies to twist our emotions. Either way, by omission or outright lie, it is all still lies and emotional manipulation.
I think most politicians go into politics with the idea of service to their public, with good intention. But at the end of the day, if they want to get anything at all accomplished, they are forced to play the game and sell support to gain support, sell a vote to gain a vote. And in the process they become subverted by the bribes thrown at them by the other politicians and by the lobbyists.
Who wouldn’t? We’re talking fortunes in the millions, or billions. We’re talking POWER. You want a Volvo? Shit, man, I’ll get you a fucking Maserati if you vote my way. While you’re waiting for delivery, would you like to be serviced by this state beauty queen?
So, I hear a sound-byte casting aspersions on my favored candidate. That pisses me off because I know it can’t be true, otherwise it means I have made a bad choice in candidates. I cannot make a bad choice, can I? No! Not me. I am a smart guy.
I hear a sound-byte casting aspersions on the opposing candidate, and I think, could this be true? Probably not. Surely not. No one could be so stupid as to do THAT, or think THAT, or actually say THAT out loud.
But then, I am cast in doubt and uncertainty. Would my guy present an untruth about his opponent? Really?
So, how can we decide how to choose for whom we will cast our vote? If they ALL lie and they ALL manipulate, how can we believe anything on which to make a coherent and comfortable decision?
It is my considered opinion that our government is irretrievably broken. It’s very premises and processes are so broken they cannot by fixed.
Every single one of our senators and congress-people seem to possess the attitude that they are, somehow, intellectually superior to the constituents they are supposed to serve. Instead of serving, instead of listening to their constituents, those representatives seem to have the attitudes that they are “leaders,” and that they are in the position of making their own decisions, based on their own intellectual superiority, to “lead” their constituency in the most propitious manner.
The populace of a state vote at the state level to allow abortion under given circumstances, yet the representative of that state will vociferously advocate a severely strict right-to-life stance and will vote that way in the senate or in congress, regardless of what the state-level voting indicates should be their stance.
And we, you and I, at the basest voting level of a citizen, are ALLOWING this shit! WE are fucking letting those assholes get away with that shitty attitude and self-centered performance.
The very first time some representative at any level contravenes the wishes of the broad constituency in favor of their own wishes, we should rise up and demand the ousting of that representative IMMEDIATELY.
But no . . . there are actual felons, persons convicted of felonious crime, still sitting in public office and publicly refusing to step down. They are deliberately putting us, the public, in a position of having to take ACTIVE MEASURES to FORCE these assholes out of that position.
Why are we, the public, the American public, so fucking lazy? Why do we care so little about anything but our little patch of grass? Why are we not taking some kind of concerted action to protect ourselves from these sociopathic assholes who want to control our lives?
A warning, people. Please, please, PLEASE listen to this.
Regardless of whether you claim to be Democrat, Republican, Independent, or any other persuasion, you don’t need some asshole in a suit telling you what you should do or say or how you should behave or believe. There are plenty of very intelligent people out in the masses of our fine country.
In the beginning, our forefathers intended that all of the citizens of a given region should be represented by a person who was elected by those people of that region. That elected representative was to go to big meetings of the larger government, and there speak and act and vote as directed by the majority of the citizens of the region they represent.
THEY, the representatives, were to represent US, and our wishes and desires and needs, to the bigger governmental institution. THEY are called representatives because they are supposed to represent us. Instead of us all going to the meetings, they go, and they are supposed to speak with our voice. The key to all this is in the very title of representative . . . which contains the word “represent.”
Our representatives no longer “represent” US. They represent themselves, writ large, as if they are smarter, better, more informed and more of everything than we are. THEY seem to think that we need to be led by the hand or the nose in the directions that THEY think we should go. THEY are not listening to US.
With such technology as we have today, it should be EASY to set up some kind of polling process, like a website, maybe, where we citizens can go to cast our votes regionally on any given issue. Then, the representative can take the results of the voting as their directive for representing our voice to the big meetings of big government.
It should be easy to list the issues facing each region, and to provide even and fair explanations of the details of the issues, including the dangers of it and the potential ramifications of passage or failure of a popular vote on that issue.
It should be easy to provide a forum for discussion of any issue, where each expert advocate or opponent can provide a full disclosure for any citizen to read, understand, and make commentary.
With all the manners of communications available today, it should be EASY to make our needs, wants, and desires known to our representatives on any issue facing us.
None of that is happening today, despite the fact that is should be. It is not going to happen, either. Ever.
More than ever, today, our so-called “representatives” are actually self-proclaimed intellectuals who think that diplomas from world-renown institutions of higher learning can actually take the place of solid experience. These intellectuals dream up big programs and policies that will surely be the answer to everything, but few of them have any real experience, like from a long-term job, which can reveal to them the difference between theory and application.
Theory is great. It is wonderful, and necessary to know to be really good at any job. But theory does not actually tell you what works, or doesn’t work, on any real-life job. Theory tells you how things should work, or how they are likely to work. Far too often, I have seen what I learned in school, both high school and college – the theory part – not work AT ALL as the books said it should when in real life.
Ask nearly anyone who has a higher degree and has also worked a real, hands-on job for a number of years. They will all tell you that the theory is nearly always different than the application.
So where do these self-proclaimed intellectuals get off, in telling us, who have worked real, hands-on jobs most of our lives and lived in the real world, how we should do things, and what we really need as opposed to what we think we need?
We tell them how we want them to vote, it just seems that they don’t even listen to us any longer. They think they know better than we do. And it is happening everywhere, from the township level to the county, to the state, and then to the federal government level.
Every representative should be a servant-leader. They should be a servant to those whom they represent, and represent those people accurately, faultlessly, and fearlessly. They should be leaders only to other members of the representative group who seem unsure about the desires or demands of their own constituency.
I know. I dream of a perfect world that cannot possibly exist. We live in a fractured world where we can but do the best we are able with what we have.
Still, what have we got to lose by trying? Except our freedom . . . if we do nothing.