Several times I have considered writing about something not related to atheism on this blog, and every time I have decided against it. Every time until now.
The Iowa Caucuses have just concluded (mercifully), and I wanted to offer a few thoughts. I am under no illusion that this is something that a lot of you will want to read, and frankly I’ll be shocked if more than a few of you do. For what it is worth I hope that you are reading this, because I think I have something to offer. But, like I’ve said before, at the very least sitting down and organizing my thoughts is something of a stress reliever for me, so here we go.
There is a strange phenomenon that happens during campaign seasons. At some point in the absurdly long process that is election season in the United States, individual candidates completely change what they stand for. And I do not mean that their individual policy positions change, although they may, but I mean something deeper. At some point in this process those of us who are engaged select someone we want to support, and at that point the candidate stops being an individual person who agrees with us (individual voters) on X number of issues and disagrees on Y number of issues, and they morph into a symbol. These symbols end up serving as empty vessels which we then fill up with every fear and concern that we have for our country/society, every reform that we think desperately needs to happen, and every hope that we have for our collective future.
Campaign staffers are very aware of this, and they capitalize on it to great effect. That said, this isn’t always a bad thing. This emotional connection serves as the fuel that keeps so many of us engaged, active, and informed.
Something that we all need to recognize, though, and I include myself in this, is that there is a darker side to this phenomenon…
The problem is this, once we have imbued these public figures with all of our individual hopes and fears it becomes very difficult to continue seeing them as human beings. This is because what they represent is no longer simply an individual that we would like to occupy a particular elected office, rather, these elections become referendums on our entire worldview/way of life. An individual person may be right, wrong, competent, incompetent, etc… This type of symbol, though, cannot be wrong. As symbols, our candidates come to represent our interpretation of the world around us, and since it is our interpretation, you cannot prove that it is wrong. Thus, after a certain point in these election cycles we stop perceiving a challenge to our candidate of choice as a difference of opinion on a public policy issue, and we begin to feel that these challenges are a direct attack on the way that we perceive the world. A direct attack on us. We begin to evaluate everything through this lens. So, questions about a candidate’s electability turn from being a legitimate and pragmatic evaluation of the facts, into a pessimistic worldview and acceptance of the status quo that will doom us all… Questions about a candidate’s trustworthiness move from being legitimate questions about potential scandals that may impact credibility in the future, towards being an all out assault on a someone which has the effect of doing the “other side’s” work for them. Beyond this, we slowly lose the ability to evaluate our own candidates by the same standard that we apply to others. When our candidate chances their mind it represents growth and flexibility, when the “other” candidate changes their mind it demonstrates opportunism and being willing to do anything to get elected. Our candidate’s experience means they can get things done, while the other candidates experience makes them a corrupted insider who is part of the problem… etc
This is dangerous, because what gets completely lost once people are in this mentality is the ability to have civil dialogue. When someone is the “enemy” instead of simply being the other candidate, or the other party, you cannot work with them, and certainly cannot support them! Once we have placed someone in that box, or once we paint them as not only disagreeing with us, but as being immoral, not only can we not work with their supporters, but we often feel morally obliged to DISAGREE with them.
I have seen, and been a part of, way too much of this in the last several months. This country is at a point where we could seriously benefit from a return to civil dialogue. I honestly try my best to display this all the time… aaaaaand I still fail miserably often. But I think that we would collectively be much better off if we all became aware of the fact that when we passionately defend our candidates, we are often not actually defending our candidates. We can discuss worldviews, we can discuss policies, and we can even discuss corruption, but when we are using the language of political campaigns as proxy arguments for something else altogether we are dooming ourselves to unnecessary fighting….
Christjahn 