Your Mom’s A Blog

Continuing in the same vein as my previous post. I’m finding it very difficult to determine what and how I should think and feel about any individual or party because of the amount of propaganda being spewed by both sides. Since World War II propaganda has had a very negative connotation and rightly so, though both sides engaged in it. Today it is no less a source of unnecessary paranoia, mistrust and fear than it ever was. (If you want something really interesting, look up the etymology of propaganda and how it has been used in the past, specifically the College of Propaganda.)

What is propaganda? It is information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc. This definition implies that legitimate information that is spread to discredit someone or something also falls under the definition of propaganda, but for my purposes I’ll focus on propaganda of a very particular sort, the unsubstantiated and rhetorical. Unsubstantiated propaganda is the type we all know well and is spread via something like an Internet chain e-mail. Rhetorical propaganda is of the type that uses something besides logic or proof to convince the individual. An example I’ve seen lately was one in which Che Guevara was referred to as “the mass murderer” Che Guevara. This is clearly an attempt to prejudice the listener against Che Guevara, especially if the listener does not know much about this particular Cuban guerilla leader.

Propaganda in politics is particularly prevalent because it has a built in benefit (at least in America) of warning you about threats to your freedom. The problem we face is that we do not ask anyone to substantiate any claim they make about anyone or anything. Let me put forth a few examples from the previous election. Obama was involved with a shady real-estate deal with a notorious Chicago political “fixer.” McCain told secrets to prevent being tortured in clear violation of standing military orders.

I’ve heard both of these and have one comment. Prove it. More importantly, after proving it, do something to prove malicious intent or malice aforethought by either candidate. A big problem we seem to have as Americans is taking a very G.I. Joe, black and white view of everything. Every human on the planet is guilty of bad judgment at some point in time and every person falls short of their own ideal goals. What is troublesome is how blind we are to that when we like the person and how it is all we see when we don’t.

If you are reading this and going “Yeah, but…” for either of the previous scenarios please stop for a moment and consider the following.

1. What primary source document have you seen to prove your opinion one way or another. Most news and talk radio do not count because they do not reveal their sources of information. Think primary, someone who was there, who saw with their own eyes or heard with their own ears and who does not have a clear political agenda or obvious reason to lie.

2. What do you know about your own party? Without going to Wikipedia or Google can you tell me the basic philosophical tenants of your party, i.e., what is the main goal of conservatism, what are the primary branches of liberalism?

3. What information do you have to suggest that one idea is better or worse than any other idea besides how you feel about it? You want to deregulate business? What study can you show comparing business ventures with more regulation to ones with less regulation? You want to provide universal health care? Has anyone else done that, has it worked, why or why not? Simply thinking about the problem is not sufficient. That mind set held the sciences back for hundreds of year. Just because something seems obvious or right to you does not mean that it is obvious or right to someone else, or objectively correct.

I am personally guilty of forming opinions without much in the way of proof one way or another. It is a problem I’m trying to rectify and one I’m finding very difficult. The amount of information out there is enormous. How do you filter legitimate content and then how do you find the information you need? I suspect that if I have this problem most people must have a similar problem. The fact that people are so vehement on both sides when the evidence to me seems at best contradictory and at worst indiscernible leads me to believe we are not forming opinions on facts as much as feelings.

You may have heard the expression “Never discuss politics or religion in mixed company.” I intend to break that rule, but only in the realm of politics. Apparently I’ve given people the impression that I am a Republican. I am not. Nor am I a Democrat. I’m a swing voter, depending on the issues, the stance of the party and the comments of the candidate. The problem is that the American populous is making it harder and harder to make a good decision about who to vote for. This begs the question, “how does the populous make voting more difficult?” The simple answer is by being uninformed about the general function of government.

If anyone has followed a presidential election since the 1980’s you’ve probably noticed some hot button issues. Abortion, gun control, immigration, welfare reform, etc. are all perennial giants in the political scene. The reason that we hear about these every four years is because the public wants to hear about them. The problem is that the president of the United States has little say in these topics. I’ll use abortion as the example. In the United States abortion is legal under certain constraints, some of these constraints are set by the federal government, some by the state.

Irrespective of any personal opinion on the matter, the Supreme Court made a ruling on the constitutionality of abortion. Under the 9^th and 14^th Amendments to the Constitution the Supreme Court decided that a woman ultimately has the right to decide what happens with her own body. This is based off a right to privacy which has a long (emphasis on long) history in the law. This is contrasted against the rights of the fetus or unborn child. Because we are a nation which has it’s roots in past precedence and there is much less in the way of past precedence for legal issues involving beings as yet unborn, the rights of the mother won out.

For those against abortion I should say that it is unlikely that Roe v. Wade will be overturned in its current state. Doing so means going directly against 2 Constitutional amendments. Most likely the balance will have to be struck between the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn child, but even this is problematic. What is even more problematic is a president saying he is going to do anything about this issue at all. Why? For starters he doesn’t introduce legislation, he doesn’t debate legislation and nominally does not amend legislation (save for the line item veto.) That is the job of the legislature. The president can surely choose to pass or veto something once it has been approved by the House and Senate. Even then, the law is subject to Judicial Review.

This is the whole point of our system. Every branch of government is subject to every other branch so that no one can take truly unilateral action unless all branches agree. This is a fact that is totally ignored during most presidential campaigns. As a result, all we really hear is some vague idea of how the president plans to lead the party, not the country. A problem that also makes it very difficult to determine a real political agenda when both sides spend all their time pandering for additional support with empty words and razzle-dazzle.