Happy End of Political Ads Day, America!
When I’m not making a loud annoying noise through political commercials (no matter whose they are), I put them on mute (or turn them off) and think about Ancient Athens.
Athens is where we get the “democratic” part of our democratic republic. (The voting part is democracy. The fact that we appoint our own citizens instead of having a hereditary monarch is the republic part.) They didn’t have the same kind of checks and balances that we do, so in criminal trials both the defense and prosecution could trot out any old thing to try to influence the jury, which was sometimes a ridiculously large amount of people, in their favor. “His wife is crippled, his children are on the brink of starvation...” they tried anything that would get them more voters. It didn’t matter how they went about it, or even if what they were presenting to the voters was true, the only thing they cared about was the end result: whether or not they won.
In America today we are obsessed with equality. Everyone is equal, so everyone gets a vote. This is how it should be. But the best way to ensure that a country has good leaders is to make sure that its voters are informed. And sadly, not every voter in America is informed. We vote along party lines, or because someone else tells us how to vote, or because we like the look of the candidate.
The fact that an election has to include the endless parade of advertisements about how one politician is better than another, or about how terrible and cruel a politician’s opponent is makes me sad. It makes me feel like we’re waiting in the gallery to pass judgement on an Athenian criminal: “don’t send him to prison, he’s got to work to feed his family!”
Today, exercise your right as an American citizen and vote. But don’t listen to the ads, whether they’re mudslinging the opposition or painting their candidate in a flattering light, they only tell you what they think you want to hear.
Be informed. And vote for America.
No comments:
Post a Comment