The Dark Side

Unless you live under a rock, you are probably aware that political campaign season has been underway for quite some time now.  I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with political campaigns.  I love campaign season because it can be exciting to follow but I also hate political campaigns because there is so much underhandedness and insincerity involved.

If you're a politician, the media and the people are just looking to see you trip up.  I mean heaven forbid you build a political platform, take a position, or say something in a speech that contradicts something you said or something you voted on a decade ago or more.  Even if you do manage to be stubbornly unchanging, which is totally inhuman and a bit unrealistic, you could still easily be taken out of context if you're wording is not constructed just right so as to avoid ever being misconstrued.

Negative adverts attacking opposing candidates thrive on these elements of the human condition.  They take something beautiful and use it to do ugly things.  People who go through life with an open mind are always changing and growing.  Life will cease to be worth living if you become set in your ways.  That's when you know it will be time to find other ways to challenge yourself.  But that mentality just does not fly in a political campaign - it only makes you an easy target.

Now let's say you take a position and then show your level of understanding of the issue by acknowledging the existence of the opposing viewpoint and explaining why you feel it is wrong.  You could be taken out of context and be accused of having taken the opposing position as a result of having acted to actually strengthen your own position.  It is sadly ironic but being thoughtful like that just does not fly in a political campaign - it only makes you an easy target.

The target of what, you might ask.  A target of the aforementioned shallow attack adverts, which the general public seems to be maddeningly easy to get swayed by.  That's another thing that bothers me.  Why is it that the candidate at the receiving end of such adverts automatically drops in the polls?  Is the general public really that incapable of thinking for themselves or forming their own opinions?  Are they really somehow that oblivious to the fact that their state is being targeted and that they're just being played like pawns in a childish game?

Truth be told, this is not a recent phenomenon.  The types of media used may change over the years but the backbiting culture has always been there.  So have the generally ignorant and oblivious citizens who just go with the flow and are thus easily exploited.  All the underhandedness, insincerity, and complacency coming to the forefront is merely the dark side of humanity being exposed for what it is.  All the madness and drama are just products of our sinful nature.

Matthew 20: 17-28