POLITICAL GAMES
I have been taken to taken on to task on two occasions recently for making reference to political activities of our time as “games.”
I think it quite proper to equate the various elements of political
realities with other forms of competitive action. The political “game” involves organized teams competing in actions which are intended to be detrimental to the success of the opposition, or, at least, not helpful.
My one questioner want to know what I hoped to achieve by “cheapening” the entire process of our national election of a President of the
United States of America by likening the serious procedure of doing so to a common board game in which chance played a great part in making the final choice. The word ”cheapening” was accented, as you might imagine, and this particular individual seemed to have at her command a fund of information all the way back to Colonial Days dwelt on supposed perfection in politics. Whatever it was I was supposed to have said seems to have infringed somewhat on set, historical precedent. My presentation was said to have been “seriously lacking in the qualities of dignity one should adhere to when discussing our elected leaders.”
The very next day I was taken to task a second time by a gentleman who accused me of “ridiculing the Sports Heroes of our time - now and historical by comparing what they did with a bunch of cheap politicians who would lie, cheat and steal for votes ...men who had not the slightest idea of good sportsmanship might be....”
I have decided that if I can keep those two extremes excited, I'm at just about the right place in talking abut the current political scene. After all, I could have called it a “circus”, a “zoo”, or other such deriding names may of which fit segments of the body politic at times.
To some extent they are both right, but it also points to the seriousness of an accusation that is being made more and more about American voters. That is the contention which insists that,at least, half of us are not at all qualified to be deciding most of the issues which are handed down to us. Our opinion in the form of a “vote”is not always as well founded as we would like people to think it is. We are, to a large extent – some say over fifty percent - functionally illiterate concerning the actual issues which face our nation at any given time.
I have a fear lurking in the back of my head which suggests the percentage chosen might even be a bit too generous. The average American citizen has only a vague idea of everything which underlies the many complex issues facing the nation today. What a comparatively few read and that information another segment of the population sees and hears on radio and TV, films or on the Internet is, at best, sketchy and inadequate as a [primary source of information required by the citizen if he or she is to vote with serious intent.
Those avenues of information provide a guide line. That is true, but just as many who travel find that the destination can often prove to be far different form the paradise promised in the brochure which helped them make the choice.
We worry a great deal about the future of our nation, and it seems right to do so, but unless we start giving more detailed attention to the comparative study of various phases in our national history at all educational levels, we are doomed.
Far too many voters will go to the voting booth in November, in the same attitude they might visit a sales point for lottery tickets. A few of us will make a choice with special care and attention to mathematical averages, the vast majority will call on the political “machine” to make the choices on their behalf, because they don't know how to do it, and another segment of us will mark the ballots, punch chards, pull levers, press buttons, or simply touch pictures of the favorites of the moment as means leading to an end..
To speak of the process as a “game” strikes me as being a rather tame treatment.
A.L.M. July 19, 2004. [c720wds]
