We’re, mercifully, only a week away from what has been one of the nastiest seasons of election campaigns in living memory, with more mud being slung and blood being spilled than in a monster truck rally in Rupp arena in Lexington Ky.   It’s enough to make the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) cry.   And it’s not just the gutter politics that is so repugnant, with one lie or liable after another flashing across our screen, sanctioned by both major parties and the Tea Party as well,  it’s the complete lack of logic in the campaigns as well.    

For example,  how about this appeal—- ‘vote for me, I’ve never been to Washington D.C. or been a politician or accomplished anything as a public servant before now.  Since you’re angry with those who have been or are public servants, you should vote for me since I am the person who can go up there and change things!”   Hmmm…. What’s wrong with this picture?    It reminds me of the old Holiday Inn Express commericals.  I keep waiting for them to say ‘Hi, I have no expertise at all in the political process, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night…..’  If you had various people asking for you to choose them to repair your car, and one of them was running on the platform of ‘I have no experience at all in repairing cars’, would you really pick that one?     I hope not.

Or how about this appeal—- ‘This man went to Washington and voted just exactly as he told you he would during the last campaign— You can’t trust him!’    But wait a minute, isn’t it an example of integrity when a person does what they say they will do, and keeps his promises?  You may disagree with what he or she promised to do, but you really can’t question their ethical integrity or their trustworthiness on that basis.  

The ad hominem attacks, attacks on people’s character, seem to far outnumber  the actual putting forward of planks in one’s own platform, sometimes they even stoop as low as to attack a person’s spouse, which really has nothing to do with the merits or demerits of the candidate in question.  

And it is more than disturbing that some of those who protest the loudest that they are Christians, are the very ones most acting in unchristian ways in their ads and attacks.  Amazing.   Sometimes it seems to be a contest to see which candidate can stoop the lowest.    This is not what Jesus meant when he said ‘whoever would be first,  must become last and the servant of all’.  The fact that we as the public put up with the spending of billions of dollars for these sorts of TV ads tells me one thing—- we are going to get the candidates we deserve, and then of course we will realize—- we just made a horrible mistake.  Democracy may not be dead,  but it sure is sick in America, when it becomes so obvious that the candidates think they can just posture with out any meaningful dealing with complex issues,  and still get themselves elected by spending the most money and having the most attack ads.         Sigh.   I think I’ll move to a democracy that is less insane—– say France, for example 🙂