George Orwell, in his essay “Politics and the English Language” wrote, “Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from conservatives to anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Reading that gives me comfort, given the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling this week allowing corporations and unions to directly fund political advertisements again. The ruling would affect 24 states that have enacted such limitations, and strikes down several provisions of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act, including eliminating the provision that requires these ads to be issue-based, and not directly endorsing or attacking a candidate.
I’ll admit that my first reaction to this news was not positive. I generally support campaign finance regulation. However, I have to admit that Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, has a good point.
“When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Kennedy said. "The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”
There’s the rub - “...think for ourselves.”
When I worked in politics, the term “rational ignorance” was thrown about quite a bit. The rationale behind that term is that people generally don’t have a great deal of time to think about the big issues, because they’re busy doing other things, like surviving. When one works an eight-hour day, followed by making dinner, helping the kids with homework and figuring out how to pay the bills, there isn’t a lot of time for vigorous debate about the effects of lowering the capital gains tax, or whether it’s wise for the federal reserve to toy with interest rates.
In reality, “rational ignorance” was simply used to justify dumbing things down to a point where issues simply became words, words and more words - scary words, reassuring words, provocative words - but really, words with little behind them in the way of adult thought.
Now, thanks to this ruling, we will have even more of those words to wade through in our never-ending quest for political fact and truth, if there even is such a thing anymore.
One of my favorite aphorisms, in fact I think I came up with it, is “In a democracy, one way or another, we all wind up with the government we deserve.” Not the government we want, not the one we think we deserve, but the one we pure, plain and simple outright deserve. When a politician screws up, it’s our fault for putting them in that position. If we, as an electorate, actually pay attention to a political ad that outright avoids truth in favor of fearful motivations that are light on facts and heavy on innuendo, we deserve what we’re bound to get - deceits piled on deceits.
I can live with the court’s ruling because it doesn’t treat voters like children, demanding that everyone else mind their manners as to not unduly influence our choice. I say let the consequences of our actions bear fruit. If we’re so dumb as to allow a 30-second commercial push our votes to one side or another, without doing any independent research, so be it. We asked for it. The only way we’ll learn is by living through it. Republicans learned not to nominate someone whose sole appeal was that a voter would like to have them over for a backyard barbecue (Bush) and, hopefully, Democrats will learn that propping someone up as the opposite of the previous president, whose sole selling point was the nebulous prospect of hope, isn’t enough (Obama).
One of these days, we’re going to have to elect someone that isn’t dependent on a 30-second sound bite or a one-word slogan. On that day, the issue ad isn’t going to matter, because we will have, hopefully, woken up to the fact that we need to do our homework. We might just dawn on the fact that, no matter what the pundits and ads say, it really is our fault if things go south. There will be no deflection onto obstructionist members of the opposing party. Just us, the voters, finally taking a little responsibility.
The Supreme Court made the right call, if for no other reason than it places the responsibility for letting words affect us back where it belongs - with us, the voters.
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George Orwell, in his essay “Politics and the English Language” wrote, “Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from conservatives to anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Reading that gives me comfort, given the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling this week allowing corporations and unions to directly fund political advertisements again. The ruling would affect 24 states that have enacted such limitations, and strikes down several provisions of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act, including eliminating the provision that requires these ads to be issue-based, and not directly endorsing or attacking a candidate.
I’ll admit that my first reaction to this news was not positive. I generally support campaign finance regulation. However, I have to admit that Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, has a good point.
“When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Kennedy said. "The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”
There’s the rub - “...think for ourselves.”
When I worked in politics, the term “rational ignorance” was thrown about quite a bit. The rationale behind that term is that people generally don’t have a great deal of time to think about the big issues, because they’re busy doing other things, like surviving. When one works an eight-hour day, followed by making dinner, helping the kids with homework and figuring out how to pay the bills, there isn’t a lot of time for vigorous debate about the effects of lowering the capital gains tax, or whether it’s wise for the federal reserve to toy with interest rates.
In reality, “rational ignorance” was simply used to justify dumbing things down to a point where issues simply became words, words and more words - scary words, reassuring words, provocative words - but really, words with little behind them in the way of adult thought.
Now, thanks to this ruling, we will have even more of those words to wade through in our never-ending quest for political fact and truth, if there even is such a thing anymore.
One of my favorite aphorisms, in fact I think I came up with it, is “In a democracy, one way or another, we all wind up with the government we deserve.” Not the government we want, not the one we think we deserve, but the one we pure, plain and simple outright deserve. When a politician screws up, it’s our fault for putting them in that position. If we, as an electorate, actually pay attention to a political ad that outright avoids truth in favor of fearful motivations that are light on facts and heavy on innuendo, we deserve what we’re bound to get - deceits piled on deceits.
I can live with the court’s ruling because it doesn’t treat voters like children, demanding that everyone else mind their manners as to not unduly influence our choice. I say let the consequences of our actions bear fruit. If we’re so dumb as to allow a 30-second commercial push our votes to one side or another, without doing any independent research, so be it. We asked for it. The only way we’ll learn is by living through it. Republicans learned not to nominate someone whose sole appeal was that a voter would like to have them over for a backyard barbecue (Bush) and, hopefully, Democrats will learn that propping someone up as the opposite of the previous president, whose sole selling point was the nebulous prospect of hope, isn’t enough (Obama).
One of these days, we’re going to have to elect someone that isn’t dependent on a 30-second sound bite or a one-word slogan. On that day, the issue ad isn’t going to matter, because we will have, hopefully, woken up to the fact that we need to do our homework. We might just dawn on the fact that, no matter what the pundits and ads say, it really is our fault if things go south. There will be no deflection onto obstructionist members of the opposing party. Just us, the voters, finally taking a little responsibility.
The Supreme Court made the right call, if for no other reason than it places the responsibility for letting words affect us back where it belongs - with us, the voters.
