If you are currently attending a "Go Campaign!" event this presidential primary season, take a moment to count the number of campaign organizers motivated by policy issues.
...
Still waiting?
Campaigns are fed more by vanity than altruism. Listen to the messages driving the campaign, and you'll see a familiar source of collective euphoria, how warm and fuzzy supporters feel when confronted by the image of their leader, how they perk up when told how "new" and "different" they are.
By preying on the desire for belonging, politicians shunt aside time consuming explanations of policy. Rather than build cohesion through knowledge, they focus on a Leader who gathers support through forceful assertions.
And it works because we all wish to be understood, and we sympathize with those who appear to be understood. Internally, "if only we had enough time, enough power to construct our own method of communication, to look into the eyes of others and say "I mean this", we wouldn't have to rely on terms established by others." And so we look to those "grassroot campaigns", those independent artists, those seeking a new way, we look to them simply because an attempt at an alternate form of communication indicates ability.
The desire to communicate originally is a will-o'-the-wisp, a false light shining from those seeking respectability. What is promised matters little next to the force with which the message is stated.
Edited 10/3/07
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1 comment:
I advocate the sanctification of our leaders. At least then when they shed hair or fingernails or even blood, people could guarantee cures for diseases like AIDS or epilepsy and health insurance companies would be even more useless than they already are.
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