Melissa’s Soapbox

This article from an Obsidian Wings piece called Lies and Democracy published on Friday, January 25, 2008, really resonated with me: 

Lying in an election is basically a way of saying:  we know how you ought to vote, and if we can’t get you to vote that way by presenting you with facts and arguments, or even with truthful but emotionally shaded appeals, then we will get you to vote our way by telling you things that are not true.  It’s hard to see what could be more profoundly disrespectful of people’s right to decide for themselves whom to vote for.

It is also, needless to say, at odds with one of the basic principles of democracy:  that people have the right to decide for themselves whom to support.

But it also undermines democracy by placing intolerable burdens on citizens.  As I said above, I think that the assumption that most people are not following the news closely enough to be able to tell who is telling the truth and who is lying is probably correct.  In part, this is because (in my humble opinion) many people are not sufficiently politically informed.  I think that it is our duty as citizens to learn enough to cast informed votes, and that this requires both following the news to some extent and also acquiring enough background knowledge (e.g., of economics) to be able to assess what people say.

However, I do not think that it ought to be our duty as citizens to become complete political junkies, the sorts of people who follow each and every twist and turn in a Presidential campaign.  Some of us are like that (she said, bashfully), but I cannot see any reason at all why everyone should be.

It’s like the tobacco companies’ attempts to confuse people by coming up with research that seemed to show that smoking was harmless.  The strategy is to sow enough doubt that people who are not willing to slog through the science, the interminable debates about the methodological deficiencies of this or that study, etc., etc., etc., are likely to come away with a vague sense that the case that smoking is bad isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  It is designed to leave people with two options: either spend an awful lot of time working through the science, or be misled.  In so doing, it asks a lot of ordinary people who have lives to lead:  it prevents them from just reading stuff, forming a more or less correct view, and acting accordingly.  And it is deeply wrong.

Likewise here:  the Clintons’ strategy seems to be designed to leave people with two options:  either become political junkies, follow every tiny detail of all these stories, and make up your minds on the merits, or not, in which case you will be left with a vague sense that Obama is not all he should be — a sense that is wholly unsupported by the facts.  (To be clear: I am sure that Obama is not, in fact, all he should be.  But to the extent that anyone reaches this conclusion based on lies, their sense that he is not all he should be is not based on facts.)

People who do that have no respect for voters, no respect for their right to make up their own minds, and no respect for our democratic system.

I find this article highly relevant because I just recently realized that I am a political junkie … I engage in the obsessive, Google-driven, news-consuming behaviors referred to by this author as beyond the call of duty for the normal informed voter.  Obviously, when one is on a 6-month hiatus from a larger 4-year sabbatical, one has plenty of time to become educated on a variety of different issues.  

While I can respect that people are busy (certainly busier than me), I personally am more driven by a need to know the truth, via my outrage at the Clintons’ behavior, than anything else.  Muddying the waters with misinformation may cause hopeless complacency (”aw, shucks, I’ll never be able to sort it all out, and it’s just all politics anyway”) in some people, but I find it personally offensive that Hillary assumes me so stupid.

Furthermore, I believe there is a way to say, ”no, I will not accept and internalize your flagrant marketing messages as viable and intelligent campaign issues,” without voraciously reading and memorizing every corner of the news.  I just can’t accept that the only way to know that there’s rotten cheese in Denmark is to be a political junkie (especially since the Clintons have hit an all-time character low in that is finally being covered by mainstream news). 

For instance, try the “sniff” test, political blogs, choose a single issue or controversy and extrapolate from your findings, and most importantly, ask.  I have found recently that my over-informed ability to quote candidates’ exact statements and drop relevant statistics at will can be viewed as a negative in some circles.  And after a long week of many sad realizations regarding American voters, that’s the saddest of them all.