The Politics of Vilification

I’ve never had much issue with dirt, the soil type anyway. Political dirt is another story. It must work or why would they all use it. I have strong doubts about its efficiency. In my own little straw poll I have determined that 99% of us are sick to our stomach over the attack ads. I say 99% because I am sure some demented soul must love the attack strategy.

It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation might be, as Flower put so succinctly, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”.

It is a darn shame that so few people running for office have any inkling on how to present them selves. They seem dreadfully adept at vilifying their opponent and have so little to say about their own goals. The demagogues start throwing their lies about and in a downward, self replicating spiral the opponents respond and we have a continuous storm of defecation.

The health care bill is a good example. How many emails have you gotten that assure you with 100% confidence the health care bill is going to be detrimental to you. Odd, since those emails have no idea of your situation. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were both fond of the big lie. Shout it loud enough and with enough frequency and some gullible souls will begin to believe it.

I can’t believe how many friends of mine send me some kind of dire email that says it has been checked against one of the fraud sites and it is 100% TRUE. It takes all of 15 seconds to go to someplace like Snopes to determine that not one of the seemingly intelligent people who have forwarded that email have checked on it’s veracity.

I intend to cast my ballot for those who lie the least.
Is that not a sad commentary on the democratic process?