We will decide this election, and there is nothing we can do about it.
The truth almost seems ashamed of itself.
Do people understand that these moronic messages and lies are specifically designed for distrusting, cynical voters convinced that they are immune from them? When they rebel against the stupidity of our political discourse by tuning out, how many realize that that is the very reaction that is desired of them? Their revolution is submission, and it will be televised.
When they hear or read the messages and lies, after they tell themselves that they are too smart and saavy to believe any of this political nonsense, do they ever realize that the message lingers in their head, struggling desperately to find a suitable place among their premises and preconceptions? (Obama can't be a Muslim, can he? Well, we do know that he isn't very patriotic, so maybe...).
Do people not care about the lies, or are they simply not paying attention? Certainly the latter more than the former (almost 80% of Americans get most of their campaign information from political advertisements). In that case, the game is all about choosing the best lies to put to scary music in a 30-second spot: Obama wants to teach oral sex to kindergarteners, he has an "I Brake for White Women" bumper sticker on his car, and he will take your guns and give them to his pastor.
At what point does a meaningless slogan become fact? When did it become inarguable that the surge worked, that we are fighting al-Quaeda in Iraq, that McCain is a maverick? What if it were possible to calculate an average number of public repetitions required before a majority of people believe something? Would you join me in being afraid what that figure would be?
For all my consumption of political information, for all the countless hours I spend thinking about this stuff, I am essentially as clueless as anyone else. I am helpless. Like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
