Exultate Justi

Monday, September 22, 2008

'Tis the Silly Season Again (or, "Why I Don't Do Politics Much Anymore")

It always starts innocently enough; campaign signs start to pop up in lawns throughout the neighborhood, folks collecting petition signatures start haunting the entrances to stores around town, and local candidates for office begin strolling and trolling for votes.

Eventually, however, the campaign commercials start, and they just. Don't. Stop. Commercial after commercial, one after the other, thunderously decrying this one or that one, that issue or this cause. Each working harder than the last to convince you - the viewer - that the chosen candidate's opponent is little more than Satan incarnate, ready to hand over your entire life savings to a nefarious evil like "Big Oil!" (these guys make a lot of money, it seems. Where can I apply to work for Big Oil? Is there a website, or something? BigOil.com, perhaps?), or maybe cut funding for kids, or the elderly, or fluffy animals, etc.

Hypothetical Political Ad Script #1:

Voiceover: Political insiders and Wall Street Fat-Cats may want you to think you know the real Senator Hugh Chucklehead, but how well do you really know him?

[cue sinister music, and poorly done Photoshop montage of Sen. Chucklehead with dollar signs for eyes, and the hastily gobbled remains of Mr. & Mrs. Average American dripping from his sneering lips]

Voiceover: Since 2002, Senator Chucklehead has voted against children more than three thousand times, and even more shamelessly, is known to roam the streets of Washington, D.C. after dark, cruelly poking homeless people with a sharpened stick, while tossing newborn kittens into the Potomac. Is this the kind of leadership we can trust in the White House?

You get the idea.

My question - and I ask this in all seriousness (or at least as much as I can muster) - is this: has anyone above the intellectual plane of, say, a door hinge, ever changed their mind on the basis of a campaign ad? If so, shouldn't we all worryjust a wee little bit about that fact? I mean, surely there's some kind of empirical data to support the effectiveness of these ads, or campaigns wouldn't dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the purchase of airtime, cheesy graphics, and foreboding musical scores, right? I mean, granted, there are countless hardworking Americans in the sinister music, cheesy graphic, and airtime-provision fields, and they need jobs, too, but still...

For many years, as many of you likely know, I blogged about political issues pretty much full-time, and did my best to engage in substantive dialogue with folks who stopped by to comment on my posts. Eventually, however, it became clear that I was merely adding to the noise. Those already inclined to agree with my own views shouted their hearty approval, while those who held opposing views denounced my stuff. vitriol tended to flow back and forth, and nary a mind was changed. Where, then, was the benefit?

I feel the same was about too much of our current political landscape, unfortunately. We all preach to the choir, so to speak, and actual dialogue is exceedingly hard to come by. Then again, perhaps this is how it should be. If someone is so mushy in their convictions that they can be swayed by the hackery of the modern political fray, or genuinely enter into the voting booth "undecided" in November, maybe we - as a body politic - have gotten what we deserve.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 2:19 PM |

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