Non Issue Political Campaigns

I think we have gone from scary monsters of Halloween to scary politicians. It was election day two days after Halloween in many places in the U.S. where the politicians are the real monsters of the day. I have never seen as much vicious campaigning for the various congressional, governor and other state offices as in this campaign. Far too much time has been spent on phony controversies, on saying horrible things (mostly lies) about the opponent, and in general negative campaigning.Watching the campaign commercials on TV here and reading them in the newspaper has been a less than inspiring time.

Controversies such as whether one candidate is a witch, a Marxist or whether the opponent worshipped a deity named Aqua Buddha when he was in college have been the norm. It seems in the age of mindless technological obsession the candidates feel slandering through multi media is the best way to get the voters approval. The have dumbed down to the mind of the technological addict voter.

There has been an avoidance of substance in moden day campaigns, issues like the economic meltdown that should be addressed specifically but are altogether avoided or spoken of unrealistically. Instead we hear debate as to whether Muslims should be allowed to build a mosque and cultural center a couple of blocks from Ground Zero in an area that is already home to bars and strip joints, or which candidate wants to make old people starve by curbing some of their lavish and costly social security or medicare benefits.A huge imbalance between taxes and spending is driving the national debt to dangerous levels. Yet neither party has a credible plan to be honest with voters and tell them they must sacrifice to cure the sick country in which they live. "Pander, pander, pander" to the voters is the operative mantra for the typical politician today.

The public now seems to dislike and distrust all politicians. Political party has become irrelevant as voters just want their interests to be taken seriously and acted on more often than those of the special interest groups and political correctness groups that now dominate as the squeaky wheel getting the grease. Obama has lied and behaved as badly as Bush did, this coming after a "campaign of hope and change" turned into an administration of "more of the same" unrealistic policy and smoke and mirrors. Gallup Polls shows just one-fifth are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. Yet they are frustrated about what can be done about it.

I wonder whether the public would get better politics if it put down it's cell phones, turned off reality TV shows, stopped begging for tax payer entitlements and started demanding realistic and better politicians who were serious about delaing with real problems. The myriad of real problems have been virtually ignored in the political campaigns (and ignored in congress and the presidency as well). U.S. forces are in their ninth year of war overseas, spending enormous amounts of money in a pair of wars Obama promised to end but has only expanded, reliance on foreign oil continues to increase, the old age entitlements of social security and medicare are bankrupting the country yet are viewed by politicians as political minefields that should be left untouched, a huge imbalance between taxes and spending is driving the national debt to dangerous levels and on and on...the real problems are ignored.

Instead, in this past election most of the candidates offered demons, attack ads, sound bites and fake quick fix answers in place of serious solutions. Perhaps it is a reflection of the lack of seriousness in culture today. After all, in politics the voters usually get what they deserve.