We’re political ‘victims’

Today, the way to win an election is for the candidate to tell you what’s wrong with America, what’s wrong in your life, and make sure to point the finger at the opposition and paint them as responsible. Make you hate them. If you hate them, you’ll vote for the one who sympathizes with your hatred.Negative advertising is not merely about putting your opponent down. When one candidate uses this blunt weapon against another, they are simultaneously building an irrational hatred of the other candidate. If their message is peppered with half- and un-truths, those “facts” become the banners under which they want you to join the fight against a perceived enemy. When these negative ads are spread not merely toward a candidate but against a party, a philosophy, a way of life, then real damage is done.The problem we’re all facing is that, to a large degree, the ultra-right in America have deliberately chosen to portray themselves as the victims of liberals’ control, both cultural and financial. Seen as these all-powerful aggressors, everything wrong with their view of America is painted as liberals’ fault. To gain power, they need to blame somebody; it can’t be seen to be their fault in any way. This is called Victim Politics.The ultra-right Political Action Committees (PACs) and their sitting politicians and candidates don’t discuss things with you, they tell you. There is no rational debate, just ranting and intimidation. If they tell you that liberals are responsible for all your suffering, then the right must surely be responsible for none of them. They pepper their speeches with hateful sound bites like “Obama keeps America drowning in debt” and “Obama’s budget gimmick...” They avoid telling you that the last Republican who presided over a balanced budget was Eisenhower (who taxed the rich at 55+ percent). They avoid telling you our current deficit (created by Bush, augmented by the economic crisis created by Bush) is like a wage earner with a $44,000 salary having a mortgage of $154,000 (which is completely reasonable).No, the blame for our debt they affix solely on the liberals which gives the ultra-right the license to behave without moral restraint and continue to paint the ills of the world as the sole fault of liberals. They paint themselves as victims, believe it as a political religion, a path to power.Why don’t they engage in rational debate? To do so would allow chinks in their bombast. Look, four years ago, every gun owner I knew was stockpiling ammo, so convinced were they (spurred on by the ultra-right NRA) that should Obama win, all their guns would be removed. When Obama was elected, Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA, even proclaimed on a radio show that we should hide our weapons before they come to take them away. The insistence was that Obama was immediately going to break the Constitution (specifically any and every amendment) to turn America into a gun-wasteland.Now, years later, even after the first years when Obama had a two house majority, has anyone seen even one single piece of legislature put to the house to qualify, alter, stop, confiscate guns? Nope. To discuss this real fact, to debate this, would show the ultra-right’s fallacy of argument across the board. Instead, in a recent gun magazine, the NRA’s LaPierre is telling all gun owners that “it” has all been done in secret and should Obama get re-elected, we’d see the gun confiscations begin. He never, in three pages of diatribe, ever mentions once single fact to back up his argument or what “it” is or what proof he has for such conjecture. He doesn’t have to, instead he tells the reader he knows, he tells the reader Obama hates guns, he tells the reader that Obama is, in fact, anti-American. His purpose is Victim Politics. Frighten the base, tell them who is responsible, blame and hatred — and get them to vote your way.The strength of the PACs in the coming election is worrying. It is worrying because people will be listening to half-truths and un-truths shouted from every radio and TV screen on both sides. But it is much more worrying for America because such victimization of the population with falsehoods can deepen the political, cultural and economic divide to such an extent we may never recover. It happened before, about 80 years ago, in Europe. It can easily happen again, here. Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.