There was once a time when every two years for about two or three months we were swamped with political ads on TV and radio, and signs all over the place, as politicians do what politicians are good at doing – ran for election or re-election. Somehow all that has changed—for the worse.
Now, politicians start running for re-election as soon as they’re elected, and they never stop. They are in permanent campaign mode, and with the advent of technology the deluge has gotten worse. Truth be told, so has the rhetoric, or maybe it just seems worse because now you can’t get away from it.
Political campaigning is no longer restricted to a few radio or TV spots or the posters and signs people paste up all over the place or put in their yards. Now, every time you turn on your computer, there’s a pop-up campaign message, your phone rings and it’s some politician begging you for money, and I swear there seem to be more of them than ever on TV.
They’re always annoying, but in today’s hyperpartisan, divisive, negative environment, they are downright infuriating. The messages are more extreme, and the purveyors of these diatribes have obviously not read the story of the boy who cried wolf. Either that, or they think voters are too stupid to notice.
Case in point. As a writer, I read everything and try to keep myself abreast of all political views, so I’m on the mailing lists of both sides of the American political spectrum. If you listen to them—or believe them, and I’m not sure I do either anymore—they are all losing unless you immediately send them some money. The other side is raising more money than they are, and only you can turn things around. That message might convince those who only get stuff from the side they support, but when you get it from both sides like I do, you realize that they’re acting like their hair’s on fire and it’s all a bunch of malarkey.
I also find the demands a bit too much, and totally ridiculous. There’s one for example on behalf of a well-known politician whose name I will not mention announcing that he’s just started a new communications site and I have just hours to sign up. I have, to date, received at least ten ‘last chance’ to sign up messages, some of them quite pushy and off-putting.
Some messages pass along outright falsehoods, probably again taking advantage that most people in the US—and probably other places as well—pick a side and tend to believe anything they’re told by that side. Unfortunately, since political messages are not testimony under oath, they’re not breaking any laws. That’s too bad. I would suggest passing a law to make it illegal to lie in a campaign message, but that would require the politicians who lie in campaign messages to vote for it. A snowball has a better chance of rolling through Hades without melting.
I could probably tolerate it if there was a break, another thing that’s not likely to happen. I guess we’re stuck with it, but could someone please turn the heat down, or turn on a hose to put their hair out? / NWI
